In short. TDMRep is a Community Group protocol for expressing text and data mining rights reservations and linking to licensing policies.

Definition: The TDM Reservation Protocol (TDMRep) expresses rights reservations for text and data mining of lawfully accessible web content and links to licensing policies. Text and data mining means automated analysis of digital text and data to generate information, such as patterns or correlations.

Key facts

As of 17 October 2026, the W3C community group's report list links version 3 to the report dated 10 May 2024.
Article 4 of Directive (EU) 2019/790 makes its mining exception conditional on the absence of an appropriate express rights reservation.
W3C's Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL) Information Model defines a policy language for content usage; an Offer makes rules available without granting them.

What is the protocol's status?

The TDMRep report is a Final Community Group Report, outside the W3C Standards Track. Its publication on W3C's website does not make it a W3C Standard.

The community group's stated goal covers machine-readable reservations in Europe and elsewhere, alongside machine-readable licenses. W3C describes Community Groups as community-run and says their work need not represent its membership or staff's views.

How does a website express a reservation?

The report's reservation property uses 1 for reserved rights and 0 for unreserved rights. Other values are errors and count as unset. The optional tdm-policy URL identifies licensing information.

A response header can express a reservation:

tdm-reservation: 1

The report also defines /.well-known/tdmrep.json and embedded HTML, EPUB and PDF metadata. Conforming mining software checks the site file first; response headers override its values, and embedded metadata overrides earlier values. Missing properties preserve existing values.

What does a licensing policy express?

TDMRep's policy format profiles the Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL), with policy type Offer.

The ODRL Information Model explains that an Offer presents rules from an assigning party to a wider audience. A permission describes an allowed action, while a duty describes an action required to exercise that permission. An Agreement represents granted rules between identified parties. This distinction matters when evaluating a published licensing offer: its availability alone supplies no grant of the offered permissions.

Which legal exception does the reservation address?

Article 4 of the directive concerns reproductions and extractions of lawfully accessible works for mining. Paragraph 3 specifies appropriate express reservations, including machine-readable means for publicly available online content. The article itself names no particular protocol.

Article 3 separately covers scientific research by research organisations and cultural heritage institutions with lawful access. Article 4 expressly preserves that provision. The reservation mechanism therefore operates within a legal framework that distinguishes this research exception from the exception subject to rights reservations.

FAQ

Must I publish every reservation mechanism?

The TDMRep processing rules recommend using one technique. Multiple techniques introduce the override order described above.

Can a reservation remove the scientific research exception?

Article 4(4) preserves Article 3. That exception has its own requirements concerning eligible institutions, scientific research and lawful access.

Sources

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