Phase E · Step 2

402/403 Licensing Response Standard

ContentDividend turns an AI access denial into a machine-readable path toward legitimate licensing. The edge response can tell an agent which publisher/site was requested, where the licensing manifest lives, where an inquiry can begin, and whether RSL/OLP information is available.

Important: HTTP 402 is a routing signal here, not a rights grant. ContentDividend does not emit Cloudflare's crawler-price header and does not claim that payment alone grants content rights.

HTTP 402

License required

Used when a publisher explicitly selected Require Active License and the AI-looking request supplied no ContentDividend licensed-content credential. The body and headers point the client to the publisher licensing path.

HTTP 403

Access forbidden

Used for a publisher AI pause, invalid/revoked/expired credential, inactive license, wrong site, exact-resource scope failure, or existing legacy enforcement denial.

Machine-readable headers

Header	Purpose
ContentDividend-Response-ID	Unique identifier that can later support access analytics and audit trails.
ContentDividend-Site-ID	The publisher website record being requested.
ContentDividend-Licensing-Action	Tells the client whether to obtain a license, verify/update an existing license, or treat access as forbidden.
ContentDividend-Licensing-Manifest	Publisher-specific licensing manifest with inventory, procurement and RSL/OLP routes.
ContentDividend-RSL-License	Included when the publisher has a published RSL license.
ContentDividend-OLP-Server	Included only when the publisher opted into ContentDividend OLP advertisement.
Link	Standard HTTP links to the site licensing manifest and this response-standard description.

Example 402 response

HTTP/2 402 Payment Required
Content-Type: application/json
ContentDividend-Licensing-Action: obtain_license
ContentDividend-Licensing-Manifest: https://app.contentdividend.com/v1/public/sites/SITE_ID/licensing-manifest.json
ContentDividend-Response-Standard: https://app.contentdividend.com/.well-known/contentdividend-access-response.json

{
  "code": "contentdividend_license_required",
  "requested_resource": "https://publisher.example/research/article",
  "rights_granted": false,
  "licensing": {
    "site_manifest": ".../licensing-manifest.json",
    "licensing_inquiry": ".../v1/public/licensing-request"
  }
}

For Cloudflare publishers

Use the E2 Worker package to convert ContentDividend's authorization metadata into the external 402 or 403 response. Existing v1 Workers keep their old 403 behavior until the publisher updates them.

Download E2 Worker

For agents and buyers

Start with the response's publisher licensing manifest. A licensing inquiry opens procurement; it does not grant access. Later rights still require the agreement, payment state when applicable, activation and exact publisher authorization.

Open JSON Standard Agent Licensing Manifest