Adding RSL to HTTP Headers

Web servers can convey RSL license information for HTTP responses using the Link header field. This enables crawlers and client applications to automatically discover and respect licensing terms without manual inspection of HTML or additional configuration.

The Link header field uses the following syntax to associate an external RSL license with HTTP response content:

Link: <license-URL>; rel="license"; type="application/rsl+xml"

• <license-URL> is the URI of the RSL license file.
• rel="license" indicates that the linked resource is a license for the response content.
• type="application/rsl+xml" explicitly identifies the file as an RSL license.

This syntax follows the same pattern as the HTML <link rel="license"> element used to add RSL license information to web pages, but communicates the licensing information at the protocol level.

Example Code

Below is an example of how to associate an external RSL license with an HTTP response using the Link header field:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Link: <https://example.com/license.xml>; rel="license"; type="application/rsl+xml"