TDMRep (W3C)

Live

W3C specification for expressing text and data mining permissions via a well-known JSON file, designed for EU DSM Directive compliance.

Website
w3.org/community/tdmrep
Latest update
Oct 01, 2025 Community group notes outline 2025 alignment work with AI-Pref
Primary approach
Preference signal
Also uses
Formal license

What it is

TDMRep is a W3C Community Group specification that enables publishers to declare their text and data mining (TDM) policies through a machine-readable file at /.well-known/tdmrep.json. Designed specifically to support the EU DSM Directive’s opt-out mechanism for commercial TDM.

Evidence trail

Examples

/.well-known/tdmrep.json Source

The W3C report shows a minimal root-level reservation file for a whole site.

[
  {
    "location": "/",
    "tdm-reservation": 1
  }
]
HTML meta tags Source

The same report also defines page-level HTML metadata for reservation and policy links.

<meta name="tdm-reservation" content="1">
<meta name="tdm-policy" content="/policies/policy.json">