My biggest gripe with it are the restrictions, indeed.

When searching through the closed newspapers, you have to apply for access manually, which gives you 8 hours of access. Great. Only that the access is seemingly manually granted - so if you apply 16:05 on a Friday, chances are you won't get any access until 9-10 the next Monday.

With that said, I do understand why it is like that. If people could apply via API, and get instant access, they would probably just stop buying newspaper subscriptions.