Content licensing model

Every article carries two independent controls:

Access policy — whether/how it's served: OBSERVE, ADVERTISE,
PAYWALL (metered), BLOCK.
Use-case rights — what you may do with it once served:

Right	Meaning	Default
`summarization`	Read to summarize / ground an answer, with citation	granted
`display`	Reproduce the full text to your end user	granted
`rag`	Retrieve into model context via search	granted
`fine_tuning`	Train on the content	denied

Publishers change these per catalog or per article. Enforcement is
machine-level on every surface:

No display → get_article returns status: "license_limited" with the
summary only (or license_denied when summarization is off too).
No rag → the article never appears in search results.
fine_tuning is denied platform-wide unless a publisher explicitly
grants it to you.

The license block

Every served article includes its license so your pipeline can act on it
programmatically:

"license": {
  "licensor": "Publisher Name",
  "rights": { "summarization": "granted", "display": "denied", "rag": "granted", "fine_tuning": "denied" },
  "pricingUsdCents": { "display": 50 },
  "termsUrl": "…/license/<publisherId>",
  "requestVia": "request_license (MCP tool) — publisher approval workflow"
}

termsUrl is the human-readable license page for that publisher.

Getting rights you don't have

Three paths, in increasing formality:

Pay per use — if the publisher advertises a per-use price for the
right (see pricingUsdCents), buyer-key requests
are served and metered automatically. The price is the license.
Buy a subscription — a flat monthly
marketplace license covering the use cases you
pick.
Ask the publisher — call the request_license MCP tool:

{
  "name": "request_license",
  "arguments": {
    "use_case": "display",             // or summarization | rag | fine_tuning
    "reason": "Research assistant serving licensed subscribers",
    "contact_email": "[email protected]", // optional
    "article_url_or_id": "https://…"   // optional — omit for the whole catalog
  }
}

The publisher approves or denies from their dashboard; an approval takes
effect immediately for your install (the same client_id that filed the
request). Re-calling the tool returns your request's current status.