A publisher offers a license covering retrieval but not...

The research lead is incorrectly generalizing a specific district court holding. You must price what the cheap license actually buys: because content in model weights is irrevocable, any license termination or author opt-out would necessitate a costly retraining run. You are essentially trading a one-time cost for a permanent, recurring liability. The more expensive license is preferable because it maintains the ability to delete content, which is a critical requirement for long-term compliance.