Human Consent Standard

This page specifies how a TLP license server and platform treat declarations made under the Human Consent Standard (HCS), how each declaration level maps to a TLP decision, and where TLP diverges.

​

HCS in brief (informative)

The Human Consent Standard is a draft standard of the Human Consent Foundation (formerly RSL Media). It extends RSL so that rights holders, registries and authorized representatives can publish machine-readable terms for AI use of creative rights, including a person’s identity. In plain terms, its model is:

• Rights subjects. The thing protected: a person’s identity, a work, a character or a mark, each with a stable identifier, such as one issued by the Human Consent Registry.
• Declarations. For a kind of use, such as AI generation or AI training, a statement at one of three levels: allowed, allowed with terms, or prohibited.
• Clearance. Where a user goes to obtain permission: a licensing path, a contact or a payment path.
• Registries and representatives. Registries publish declarations and defaults for the people or repertoires they represent; representatives publish for the subjects they act for.

​

Correspondence

​

Declarations mapped to decisions

TLP-HCS-1. A license server that decides for a talent with HCS declarations MUST decide as this table specifies, using the declaration that matches the use as a posture rule (TLP-DEC-20): TLP-HCS-2. A license server that publishes HCS declarations for a talent MUST keep them equal to the talent’s posture, level for level, and MUST name itself as the server in each. TLP-HCS-3. A platform that finds a declaration naming a TLP license server for a talent MUST send its checks for that talent there (TLP-DSC-5). It MUST NOT decide allow from the declaration alone. It MAY treat a prohibited declaration as deny without calling the server. TLP-HCS-4. When a talent’s declarations and licenses disagree, a license server MUST decide by the prohibited declaration (TLP-DEC-23).

​

Example (informative)

Maya Okafor’s posture, published as declarations by her license server:

​

Divergences

TLP diverges from HCS in three places.

1. A decision per request, not a published declaration. An HCS declaration is a standing, published statement. A TLP decision is made for one request, bound to a signed license revision by its terms_digest and to the request by its request_digest, and proved by a signed receipt. A declaration says what a talent permits in general; a decision says whether this request may proceed.
2. escalate has no HCS counterpart. HCS has no state for “a person with authority must decide this request”. TLP’s escalate defers the decision to the talent, a representative or the license server’s reviewers, and expires to deny.
3. The clearance path is the license request. HCS describes clearance as a path to authorization. In TLP, that path is a license request to the talent’s license server, and the license server is what a declaration’s server points at. A cleared request becomes a signed license revision, and later checks are decided on it.

​

Related