Scoop has an Ethical Paywall
Does My Organisation Need A ScoopPro Licence?
The contents of this page are intended to help you understand whether you or your organisation needs to have a ScoopPro commercial use licence to access Scoop.co.nz content.
If you:
- Routinely read work related material on Scoop.co.nz;
- Send links to - or extracts from - Scoop.co.nz material to work colleagues or clients;
- Search the web and find Scoop.co.nz results a reliable source of information about matters of professional interest to you;
- Send Scoop press releases and then check to see if those press releases have been published and/or send links to those press releases to clients or colleagues;
- Use a 3rd party service to receive Scoop links and content (e.g. Google, alerts, other media monitoring services.
Then you or your organisation needs to have a ScoopPro organisation licence to access Scoop.
Please fill out our Licensing contact form below to assist us to follow up with you.
Read more about:
Licensing Contact Form
Scoop’s Ethical Paywall - The Legal Framework
Since 2012 Scoop’s terms and conditions have clearly stated that commercial use of Scoop content requires the purchase of a Scoop Organisation Licence.
Commercial is defined as: “companies, organisations, institutions, partnerships, government departments, associations and societies, trusts and other entities, whether registered or unregistered, private or public, and whether for profit or not for profit that use Scoop Content in any professional capacity.”
And use is defined as: “encompasses, but is not limited to, downloading, sharing, e-mailing, direct linking, copying, reading, extracting, scraping, selling content, by employees, workers, agents or automated devices, or anything else what-so-ever that could be reasonably held to violate Scoop’s copyright pursuant to applicable copyright law and Scoop’s limitations of use.”
Scoop’s Ethical (Invisible) Paywall - The Practical Implications
This is perhaps most easily understood if one considers the counter-factual. If our paywall was not invisible - like for example the one at NBR - then it might be possible for someone to get around it and into our website and read the content.
Were they to do so then they would be clearly breaching our terms and conditions of use.
In NBR’s case they are providing a barrier to enforce their paywall. In Scoop’s case however because we want to maintain free public access we are operating more on an honesty box principle. I.E. If upon honest reflection you or your organisation is using Scoop in a professional capacity then you ought to purchase a license.
In the alternative if you decide that you do not want anyone in your organisation to access Scoop professionally you are free to put in place a firewall at your end to block access.
For Scoop’s part we reserve the right to block users of Scoop who we have deemed to be commercial users of Scoop, who have been asked to comply with Scoop’s terms, and who refuse to do so.
