Copyright and Rights Policy — Suno Novels

Effective date: [date] · Operated by: [Legal Entity Name], [address], India ("Suno Novels", "we", "us")

1. In one paragraph

Suno Novels hosts audio works uploaded by creators. We do not verify ownership before publication — we act on complaints. If a substantiated copyright complaint is made about a work on your account, the money connected to that work stops moving immediately, the work comes down or its earnings divert to escrow, and your account is frozen once the complaint is upheld or you fail to answer it. A dispute ends only by a written legal agreement between the parties, an order of a court or competent authority, withdrawal of the complaint, or the complaint failing. When it ends in the complainant's favour, the held money is paid to the rightful owner, and whether the work stays on the platform is that owner's decision.

And the other half, which matters just as much: filing a complaint is not free. Complaints come from verified accounts, must carry real evidence, are machine-checked against the work they accuse, and a complainant who files baseless claims loses the ability to file at all and carries liability for the damage they cause. Section 12 is the whole of that regime. We are not willing to let anyone freeze an honest creator by typing an accusation into a form.

2. Who may file

Only the owner of the copyright in a work, or a person authorised in writing to act for them. A complaint from anyone else is invalid.

Complaints are filed from a rights-holder account, not an anonymous email. There are three levels, and the level decides how fast we act:

Verification can be revoked. Section 12 says when.

3. The evidence you must provide

We grade evidence, and the grade decides whether anything automatic can happen.

Class A — establishes ownership on its face. At least one of these is required for any automatic action:

• Copyright registration certificate.
• Publishing or assignment agreement naming you and the work.
• ISBN/ISSN record, or the original publisher's page showing you as rights holder.
• For a work first published online, the original with a verifiable publication date preceding the upload you are complaining about.
• A copy of the original work itself, which we will machine-compare against the accused audio (section 12.3).

Class B — supporting. Screenshots, listings on other platforms, prior correspondence, translations of the above. Useful. Not sufficient on its own.

Class C — assertion. "I wrote this", "everyone knows it's mine", a link to a social post. This is not evidence. A complaint carrying only Class C material is closed at intake with an explanation, and no action is taken against the creator. The creator is not even notified, because there is nothing to answer.

4. What a complaint must contain

1. Your full legal name, postal address, email and phone.
2. Identification of the work you own — title, author/publisher, ISBN or registration number where one exists, and where the original can be verified.
3. Identification of the material on Suno Novels you say infringes it: the novel URL or id, and the specific episodes if it is not the whole work.
4. Your Class A evidence (section 3), uploaded, not merely described.
5. A statement that you have a good-faith belief the use is not authorised by the owner, its agent, or the law.
6. A statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information is accurate and that you are the owner or authorised to act for them — and that you accept liability, to the creator and to us, for a false or bad-faith complaint.
7. Your physical or electronic signature.
8. Which of the two tracks in section 5 you are filing.

File through the form at [sunonovels.top/copyright], which collects all of the above and is the only route that can produce automatic action. Email to [copyright@sunonovels.top] is accepted but always enters the manual queue.

5. Two tracks

You choose one when you file.

5a. Rights Claim — "this is mine, and I want the earnings"

The work is not removed. Instead:

• Its revenue is frozen at the moment we accept the claim and diverts to escrow. Nothing accrues to the uploader from that instant.
• The uploader is notified and may accept or dispute.
• If the claim is accepted, uncontested, or upheld, the escrow — including amounts that accrued before the claim but were not yet paid out — is released to you as the owner.
• No strike is recorded against a creator who accepts a claim they do not contest. A claim is about money and rights, not punishment.

This is the track we point most complainants towards. It fixes the ownership of the money without destroying a creator's account while the facts are still being established.

5b. Removal Notice — "take it down"

• The work comes down within the time in section 6, worldwide.
• A copyright strike is recorded against the uploader (section 11).
• Revenue is frozen and escrowed exactly as in 5a.
• Listeners who bought access are refunded or credited under section 10.

6. What we do, and how fast

7. What happens to the money

This is the part we want no ambiguity about.

• On acceptance of a complaint, every rupee connected to the disputed work stops moving: amounts accrued but not yet paid out, amounts inside the payout hold period, and everything earned from that moment on. It moves to a ring-fenced escrow ledger for that dispute.
• The escrow is not paid to the complainant on the strength of an allegation. It is held. It is released only on: (a) a written settlement agreement signed by both parties and given to us, (b) an order of a court or competent authority, (c) the uploader accepting the claim, or (d) the uploader failing to contest within the window in section 9.
• On resolution in the complainant's favour, the escrowed amount is paid to the rightful owner, net of payment-gateway fees already incurred, taxes we must withhold, refunds already made to listeners, and the platform commission applicable to the sale. We provide a statement reconciling every rupee.
• On resolution in the uploader's favour, the escrow is released back to the uploader, the freeze is lifted, and the work is restored.
• If the parties settle on a split, we pay according to the split in the signed agreement.
• Escrowed funds cannot fund a coupon, a payout, or any other obligation while the dispute is open, and they do not count towards a payout threshold.

8. Account freeze — when, and how wide

A freeze is deliberately staged, so that one accusation cannot destroy a working account.

Stage 1 — work-level action. The disputed work is down or earning into escrow. Everything else on the account continues: other novels stay live, keep earning, and keep paying out. This is what an accepted complaint against a creator in good standing produces.

Stage 2 — account freeze. Triggered when any of these is true:

• the complaint is upheld, or the creator does not answer within 10 days;
• the creator cannot produce the licence they declared, within 7 days of our asking;
• the creator already has a live strike;
• there are upheld complaints about two or more distinct works on the account;
• a court or government order names the account;
• we find evidence of deliberate infringement — bulk uploading of a third party's catalogue, circumventing a previous termination, forged licence documents.

While an account is frozen: no publishing, no payouts, no withdrawals, no coupon issuance, and scheduled publishes are cancelled. Earnings continue to be recorded. Unrelated works stay live unless the account is suspended outright. The creator keeps read access to their dashboard, statements, and the full dispute record including the evidence filed against them.

A freeze is lifted only on resolution as described in section 7 — a verified settlement agreement, an order, a withdrawal, or the complaint failing. We do not lift a freeze on a verbal assurance or a promise to sort it out later.

Fast lane out: if the creator produces a Class A licence or assignment for the disputed work within 48 hours, the freeze is suspended and the work restored pending review. Being able to prove your rights quickly should cost you two days, not two months.

9. Contesting a complaint (counter-notice)

The uploader may contest within 10 days of notification. A counter-notice must contain:

1. Full legal name, postal address, email and phone.
2. Identification of the material and where it appeared.
3. A statement, under penalty of perjury, of a good-faith belief that the material was removed or claimed by mistake or misidentification, or that the uploader holds the necessary rights — with the evidence: the licence, the assignment, the publisher agreement, proof of original authorship, or the basis for public domain.
4. Consent to the jurisdiction of the courts at [city], India.
5. Signature.

We forward the counter-notice, including the uploader's contact details, to the complainant. Both sides should understand that filing either a complaint or a counter-notice discloses their identity and contact information to the other side; this is stated again in our Privacy Policy.

Then, following the mechanism in Rule 75 of the Copyright Rules, 2013:

• The complainant has 21 days from the takedown to produce an order from a competent court restraining the material.
• If no such order reaches us within 21 days, we restore the material, release the escrow to the uploader, remove the strike, and lift the freeze.
• If an order does reach us, the material stays down and the escrow stays held until the matter is decided or settled.

For complaints under the United States DMCA about material accessible in the US, we operate an equivalent notice-and-counter-notice process with the statutory 10–14 business day window. Our designated agent is [name, address, email].

10. Resolution, listeners, and the owner's decision

Listeners who paid for a removed work are made whole: prorated refund or account credit, their choice; refunds funded first from the disputed escrow, then by us; downloads invalidated at the next connection. A listener is never asked to pay twice for the same work if the rights holder republishes it and we can reasonably honour the entitlement.

Once ownership is established or agreed, the work's future is the rights holder's decision. They may choose any of:

1. Remove permanently — stays down; entitlements refunded.
2. Transfer — moved to the rights holder's own creator account; stays live; listener access uninterrupted; future revenue theirs.
3. Licence in place — stays on the uploader's account under a written licence, revenue split as agreed; we implement that split on the platform.
4. Keep available free — stays live, earning nothing for anyone.

We implement the choice as given, and we do not return a work to paid distribution over the rights holder's objection.

11. Strikes against creators

• An uncontested Removal Notice results in one strike.
• A strike expires 90 days after issue, provided the creator completes our copyright briefing and gets no further strike in that period.
• Three live strikes terminate the account: works removed, creator agreement ended, remaining undisputed earnings paid after the hold period less escrowed or clawed-back amounts.
• A strike reversed on appeal or by the 21-day rule is erased, not merely expired, and the creator is told so in writing.
• Strikes, their reasons, and the underlying complaints are visible to the creator in their dashboard.

12. Abuse of this process

A copyright process that only punishes creators is a weapon. Here is the other side of it.

12.1 Claimant accountability

Every complaint carries a signed statement under penalty of perjury (section 4.6). A complainant who files a claim they know to be false is liable to the creator and to us for the resulting loss, including our costs of handling it. We will support a wronged creator who pursues that liability, and we will provide the record.

12.2 Claimant strikes

• A complaint rejected as baseless by our review, withdrawn under pressure of evidence, or reversed on appeal, is a claimant strike.
• Two claimant strikes: verification is revoked. Everything you file goes to the manual queue and can no longer take anything down automatically.
• Three: you lose the ability to file through us entirely. You may still write to our Grievance Officer, and we still comply with court orders — but you no longer have a button that affects anyone's account.
• Trusted status requires an accuracy rate above [90]% and is reviewed monthly.

12.3 Machine corroboration

When a complainant supplies the original work (Class A), we compare it against the accused audio and text by fingerprint and similarity scoring before any automatic action.

• No meaningful similarity → the complaint cannot take anything down automatically. It goes to manual review carrying that finding, and the reviewer sees it first.
• High similarity → the complaint proceeds, and the score is shown to both parties.
• A complainant who refuses to supply the original for comparison does not get automatic action. If you will not show us what you say was copied, you do not get to take someone's work down in 36 hours.

12.4 Rate limits and velocity checks

• A Verified complainant may file at most [10] complaints per day and [30] per week with automatic effect; beyond that, everything queues for manual review.
• A sudden spike from one complainant, or several complaints against the same creator from accounts that share an identity, address, payment instrument, or device, freezes the complaints, not the creator, pending review.
• Complaints filed within [24] hours of a creator's work entering the trending rails are reviewed by a human regardless of the complainant's level. That is the window where extortion attempts cluster.

12.5 Cooling-off and repeat filings

A complaint rejected as baseless cannot be refiled against the same work by the same complainant or an affiliate unless it carries new Class A evidence. Repeat filings without new evidence are auto-rejected and count as claimant strikes.

12.6 Extortion

If a complainant contacts a creator demanding payment to withdraw a complaint, the creator should report it to [copyright@sunonovels.top] with the messages. A complaint withdrawn shortly after off-platform contact is flagged and reviewed. We treat pay-to-withdraw as abuse of this process, it results in immediate loss of filing privileges, and where the conduct looks criminal we will say so to the appropriate authority.

12.7 Presumption for creators in good standing

A creator with verified identity, a clean record, licence documents on file for every work declared as licensed, and no live strike is in good standing. A single accepted complaint against a creator in good standing produces Stage 1 action only (section 8). Their account, their other novels, their listeners, and their payouts on undisputed works are not touched while the facts are established. Good standing is visible to the creator in their dashboard, so they know where they stand before anything happens.

12.8 Transparency

We publish a quarterly report: complaints received, by complainant level; actioned; contested; reversed; claimant strikes issued; accounts frozen and unfrozen; median time to resolution. The numbers are the accountability.

13. What we do before a complaint ever arrives

• Every upload is fingerprinted and checked against our own catalogue and against Trusted rights holders' reference libraries. A near-duplicate is held for manual review rather than published.
• Creators warrant their rights at upload and must declare each work's origin — original, licensed (document required), or public domain (basis required).
• Works declared as translations of third-party novels require the licence document on file before they can be sold. A translation is a derivative work: translating someone's novel does not make it yours.
• Accounts that attract complaints are risk-scored, and their uploads are reviewed before publishing.

14. Grievance redressal and timelines

Grievance Officer: [Name], [email], [postal address], [phone] — published here and at [sunonovels.top/grievance] as required by the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.

15. Nothing here is legal advice

This policy describes how we operate our platform. It is not advice about your rights, and following it does not settle anything between you and another party. Either side may pursue its remedies in court; we comply with any order from a competent authority.