Media Insider: MBIE agrees to $251,000 settlement with NBR over unauthorised sharing of paywalled stories

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MBIE agrees to $251,000 settlement with NBR over unauthorised sharing of paywalled stories. Shayne Currie. NZME Editor-at-Large · NZ Herald · ...

A government department has agreed to pay more than $250,000 over the unauthorised sharing of paywalled National Business Review stories by its staff.

The in-principle settlement between NBR and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) for $251,133.19 is the largest payment yet in the media firm’s crusade to ensure its journalism is not being unlawfully accessed and distributed through shared passwords or cut-and-paste files.

NBR has now received more than $500,000 in settlements and legal fees from public agencies and private companies.

That would generally be enough to pay the annual salaries of around half a dozen mid-grade journalists.

MBIE, which had previously apologised for the “unauthorised sharing” of NBR content, originally offered a confidential settlement in September of almost $70,000, based on 1371 articles “shared to MBIE recipients who did not have a current NBR subscription”.

A subsequent Official Information Act response to NBR outlined a different measurement and a much larger number.

MBIE sent a breakdown of the number of unique staff without an NBR subscription who were sent one or more articles each month between mid-2021 and the end of 2025.

Across that four-and-a-half-year period, MBIE recorded 8221 instances of unlicensed staff receiving at least one NBR article.

Media Insider has now obtained the in-principle agreement between NBR and MBIE, which shows the government department has agreed to the $251,133.19 (excluding GST) payment based on that number.

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