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Dispute Resolution

Public beta

CORPUS is being built in the open. Some of what you read here is live, some is still design intent — expect it to evolve.

When a contribution is challenged — by another rights holder, by a publisher, by an automated integrity flag — CORPUS provides an appeal and mediation process. Works may be quarantined during review, but contributors are not penalised before due process concludes. This applies whether the contested item is the work itself or a downstream artefact: a score, a fraud flag, or a payout calculation.

When a contribution is challenged​

If the rights situation around a work is contested — a co-author claiming a different split, a publisher with an exclusive licence, a sample whose source is disputed — the work goes into review. During review:

  • The points associated with the contested track are held in a pending state.
  • The contributor is notified through the Action Hub on Your Dashboard.
  • The work is excluded from new training runs until the dispute resolves.

Quarantine is provisional, not punitive. A contributor whose work is later cleared keeps the points; a dispute that resolves against the contributor results in withdrawal or revised splits, with the registry recording the change.

What contributors can appeal​

Three categories of decision are appealable:

  • Point allocations. If you believe a score does not reflect what you uploaded — for example, because metadata was missed or stems were not detected — you can appeal through the Action Hub.
  • Integrity and fraud flags. Music detection, AI-generated detection, cover detection, and duplicate detection all produce automated decisions. Each is contestable. Edge cases (noise music, experimental work, unusual production) are explicitly accommodated through exception requests.
  • Payout calculations. Once distribution rounds begin, the per-model, per-round computation that produces a contributor's allocation is auditable against the registry. Disputes about the math have a path.

The underlying record for any of these is the audit trail. See Audit Trail and Transparency.

Escalation​

The escalation path moves from automated checks to human review to governance:

  1. Automated check or community flag — surfaces in the Action Hub with the reason and a response option.
  2. Admin review — if a Hub-level action does not resolve the case, it goes to CORPUS staff with the full audit trail attached.
  3. Mediation — for substantive rights disputes between parties, a mediation process is offered before any work is permanently withdrawn or splits adjusted.
  4. Governance review — for systemic decisions (scoring policy, threshold settings, contested precedents), the scoring jury and the dual-track governance structure are the institutional layer.

The governance evolution that hands oversight from a Sofilab-operated jury to a foundation-administered protocol is described in Foundation Structure. What changes as the protocol matures is who reviews; what does not change is that every disputed decision is reviewable against an immutable record.