Protecting your content from unauthorized use

You built your business by creating high-quality content that serves your readers, but as platforms and AI companies evolve, there continues to be a growing risk that your content could be surfaced in ways that cut you out entirely.

From platforms pulling much of your content directly into search results to AI scraping your website to train their models and calling it “fair use”, the threat is clear: your hard work is being used to build their businesses, often without permission or any credit. 

So what can you do?

You may not be able to stop every bad actor from misusing your content, but you can put up a legal warning sign that makes it clear they don’t have your permission.

Introducing Terms of Content Use

To address this, we’re offering standardized Terms of Content Use for all Raptive creators and publishers. 

These terms:

• Make it clear that your content belongs to you
• Signal to third parties not to copy, reproduce, or republish it without your permission
• Prevent automated scraping tools (bots, crawlers, etc.) from extracting and republishing your content
• Include carve-outs to allow Google to continue indexing your site for beneficial features (like star ratings and schema data) while drawing a clear line against replication-style features

Here’s the language we put together with our lawyers:

Your Use of Our Content.  The content we make available on this website [and through our other channels] (the “Service”) was created, developed, compiled, prepared, revised, selected, and/or arranged by us, using our own methods and judgment, and through the expenditure of substantial time and effort.  This Service and the content we make available are proprietary, and are protected by these Terms of Service (which is a contract between us and you), copyright laws, and other intellectual property laws and treaties. This Service is also protected as a collective work or compilation under U.S. copyright and other laws and treaties.  We provide it for your personal, non-commercial use only. 

You may not use, and may not authorize any third party to use, this Service or any content we make available on this Service in any manner that (i) is a source of or substitute for the Service or the content; (ii) affects our ability to earn money in connection with the Service or the content; or (iii) competes with the Service we provide.  These restrictions apply to any robot, spider, scraper, web crawler, or other automated means or any similar manual process, or any software used to access the Service.  You further agree not to violate the restrictions in any robot exclusion headers of this Service, if any, or bypass or circumvent other measures employed to prevent or limit access to the Service by automated means. 

As of August 1, Terms of Content Use will appear on all Raptive sites. Creators and publishers who wish to opt out can easily do so in their Raptive dashboard. Read more about this in our Help Center.

Just like posting a sign on your physical property, these terms make it explicitly clear that your content is yours, and that copying, scraping, or republishing it without permission isn’t allowed. It won’t stop bad actors entirely, but it puts legal protections in place and strengthens your position. If someone crosses the line, they can’t say they didn’t see the sign.

Terms of Content Use site experience

Why is this important?

Nearly all major publishers include similar language in their terms and conditions to protect their content. But most independent publishers and creators don’t have these protections in place, leaving their content vulnerable to unauthorized use. We’re changing that, making it easy for all 6,000 Raptive creators to add these protections to their sites.

Why opt out and not opt in?

We’re making this an opt-out update because it’s designed to protect you by default. By rolling this out automatically, we ensure all Raptive creators have these protections without requiring extra work. Of course, you’re always in control—if you prefer not to include it, you can opt out at any time.

More to come

Adding these Terms of Content Use is just one more way Raptive is fighting to protect your business and advocate for your rights as an independent creator. And it won’t be the last. 

We’re committed to staying ahead of emerging threats, whether that means sending formal letters to companies like Google or OpenAI to demand fair treatment, or building new tools and legal strategies to keep your content—and your livelihood—firmly in your hands.

We’re also open-sourcing this legal language so any publisher or creator can use it or adapt it to protect themselves and help set the right precedent: it isn’t OK for big tech or AI companies to take your content without permission.

Raptive will always fight to make sure creators own the future of the internet.