TDM OPT OUT
DEFINITION
The TDM opt out is a mechanism under the EU's Digital Single Market Directive letting rightsholders reserve their works from text and data mining, including use as AI training data, through a machine-readable notice.
WHAT IT MEANS IN PRACTICE
Article 4 of the DSM Directive permits text and data mining of lawfully accessible works by default, but only if the rightsholder has not expressly reserved their rights in an appropriate machine-readable way, commonly a robots.txt style signal or metadata flag.
This creates an opt-out system in the EU: silence generally permits mining unless a maker actively opts out. The US has no equivalent statutory mechanism, and whether AI training on copyrighted works is lawful there is currently being fought out case by case under the fair use doctrine.
This divergence matters for anyone publishing online, since a work can be legally minable in the EU by default while its US status remains genuinely unsettled and contested in litigation.
AN EXAMPLE
A photography studio in Lisbon adds a TDM opt-out signal to its portfolio site under the DSM Directive, blocking EU-based AI companies from lawfully scraping the images for training. A US-based AI company scraping the same site faces a separate and unresolved fair use question rather than a TDM rule.
WATCH OUT
An opt-out signal only affects future scraping where it can be detected and only carries force under EU law, not globally.
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