Introduction
Preiskel & Co has advised the Movement for an Open Web (MOW), a digital competition advocacy group, on the creation of a new contract empowering publishers with legal mechanisms to assert ownership rights over their content and charge AI companies for harvesting and using it. The contract has been made public and has been reported widely.[1]
The Search Only Contract (SOC) has already been implemented by websites within their terms pre-launch, including Trusted Reviews, Recombu, Road.cc, CaughtOffside, Football Italia and many more [2]. Industry bodies such as the Association of Online Publishers (AOP), Thinkbox, Professional Publishers Association (PPA), Impress and the Football Writers’ Association are also publicly supporting the initiative, as they believe it will help build a viable AI content economy [3].
The SOC is a free, ready-to-use set of website terms that puts control back in the hands of website owners. It applies an access fee to use a site and its content, which is waived only for search indexing and human, non-commercial use. All other access, including harvesting by AI bots, requires permission and payment.
Avoids IP law and provides a mechanism for payment for content
By avoiding copyright and IP law, and using basic contract law instead, a mechanism is available to publishers wishing to get paid. Using the SOC, if content is taken without permission or payment, website owners can simply invoice AI businesses for the content they have used and if they don’t pay, pursue them through the County Courts for a quick and cost-effective resolution.
The SOC puts a price on content usage by AI and in doing that, it creates a viable marketplace for publishers’ content assets. AI companies can’t ignore this; with a critical mass of support from publishers, they are going to be forced to the negotiating table or else will face an ever-growing volume of court summons.
AI scraping and data harvesting are critical issues for publishers where AI companies are stealing publishers’ content, using it and taking away the traffic that they rely on to survive. This undermines the very existence of the online publishing industry.
Google’s introduction of AI Overviews (AIOs) has significantly disrupted the traditional quid pro quo between publishers and search engines. The Authoritas study conducted as part of MOW, Foxglove and Independent Publisher Alliance’s complaint against AIOs found that publishers are seeing a drop of 43.9% in click-through rate on desktop and 32.5% on mobile [4]. This could result in a loss of up to 79% in traffic for websites previously ranked first in search results [5]. Supporting these findings, a report by Enders Analysis using Sistrix data revealed an 80% decrease in visibility for major UK news outlets, including The Financial Times, The Telegraph, Daily Mail, The Sun, Mirror and The Guardian [6].
The CMA’s recent announcement of conduct requirements on Google’s use of publisher content in Google Search for its generative-AI purposes is compatible with and in fact, further strengthens the position of the SOC [7]. It demonstrates that Google’s theft of publisher content without permission is unacceptable, and it forbids Google from retaliating against those who choose not to give their content away for free.
While the Conduct Requirements give publishers the ability to opt in or out of their content being used in Google’s AIOs, they do not address compensation for that use. The SOC allows publishers either to opt out of Google’s AI services and regulate other AI scraping through contractual terms, or to opt in while setting clear conditions for access. Importantly, the CMA’s Conduct Requirements also provide that Google must not retaliate against publishers for exercising AI controls, for example by reducing their prominence in search, helping ensure that adopting the SOC does not expose publishers to commercial risk.
How does it work?
The SOC is easy to implement and free to use where publishers can link to the online text from their website’s Robots.txt file. This means the terms are “machine readable” (per the Danish Eastern High Court decision [8] The SOC is available at m4ow.uk/socw/2.txt and a guide to its implementation is accessible at https://m4ow.uk/socw/.
The SOC enables small publishers to bring straightforward debt recovery claims for unwanted scraping through Money Claim Online. It sets a minimum fee of £500 for each unauthorised use of an article, image or video. To bring a claim, publishers will need evidence that their content has been used (for example, a screenshot showing their material reproduced in a chatbot output). Publishers can then issue an invoice directly to the LLM company, send a letter before claim in line with MOW’s small claims guidance and templates and, if payment is not made, pursue enforcement at their local County Court.
Please contact Tim Cowen if you have any questions on the above.
Preiskel & Co advises on competition law, abuse of dominance and regulatory matters affecting digital markets.
The material in this article is only for general review of the topics covered and does not constitute legal advice. No legal or business decision should be based on its content. This article is written in the English language. Preiskel & Co LLP is not responsible for any translation of all or part of its content into any language.
[1] You can find further details in MOW’s press release, as well as coverage by Press Gazette. Graham Lovelace has also written about the initiative in his Charting GenAI Substack newsletter. We are continuing to raise awareness of the proposal through additional channels, including LinkedIn.
[2] Publishers Take Control Over AI Harvesting with New Contract – Movement For An Open Web (15 June 2026)
[3] Publishers to bill AI firms for unwanted scraping – and take them to court if they don’t pay – Press Gazette (15 June 2026)
[4] Preiskel & Co advised publishers in a complaint against Google and welcomes the Commission’s opening of an investigation | Preiskel & Co (9 February 2026)
[5] AI summaries cause ‘devastating’ drop in audiences, online news media told | AI (artificial intelligence) | The Guardian (21 July 2025)
[6] Publishers see search visibility drop by up to 80% since 2019 – Press Gazette (31 July 2025)
[7] Google search publisher conduct requirement – GOV.UK & press release at CMA secures fairer deal for publishers and improves Google search services in UK – GOV.UK (3 June 2026) (3 June 2026)
[8] The Eastern High Court has overturned a preliminary injunction against ReData A/S, finding that BoligPortal A/S had not reserved its rights against text and data mining in a sufficient way (12 May 2026): High Court rules natural language opt-out of text and data mining insufficient | Plesner