You should know exactly what you are giving—and what you keep.

1. Ownership

You retain ownership of original material you create and any pre-existing rights you bring to a submission. ineeddata does not claim ownership of a dataset, script, documentation, or other deliverable merely because it is uploaded, validated, sampled, or submitted.

Many datasets compile facts, public records, licensed material, or work owned by others. You may grant only rights you actually hold. This policy does not expand copyright or database rights that do not otherwise exist.

2. The frozen submission controls

Before buyer review, the service freezes the submitted bundle, provenance statement, source information, license identifier, commercial-use declaration, and validation result. Those frozen records define what the buyer is evaluating and help prevent either party from changing the deal after sampling.

If you discover a material mistake, do not silently replace a frozen file. Use the supported correction or new-submission process and disclose what changed.

3. Rights during review

Before acceptance, the buyer receives a limited right to inspect the platform-selected sample, validation results, provenance, license declaration, and supporting evidence solely to decide whether the submission meets the bounty.

A buyer may not use a review sample as a substitute for purchasing the dataset, train a production model on it, publish it, resell it, or use a rejected submission outside the review process unless the material’s existing public license independently permits that use.

4. The accepted license

The winning submission’s license declaration and the bounty’s published license requirements determine the buyer’s rights. Open licenses such as CC0, CC BY 4.0, or ODC-BY operate under their own terms. A custom license must be included in clear text or attached to the frozen submission.

• If the declared license does not satisfy the bounty, the buyer may reject the submission.
• A commercial-use checkbox does not erase attribution, share-alike, source, privacy, or other license conditions.
• No ownership assignment, exclusivity, sublicensing right, or confidentiality duty exists unless the accepted license expressly says so.
• For a custom transaction license, rights begin only after Stripe confirms the buyer’s acceptance payment. Starting or canceling Checkout does not grant transaction rights. Open-license rights may already exist independently of the marketplace.

When license terms conflict, the original third-party license continues to control that third-party material. The contributor must identify the conflict rather than promising broader rights.

5. Limited license to ineeddata

You grant ineeddata a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to host, copy, secure, scan, transform for technical compatibility, validate, sample, display to the authorized buyer, deliver after acceptance, and retain the submission as reasonably necessary to operate the service, enforce policies, comply with law, and resolve disputes.

This platform license does not let ineeddata sell your submission as its own dataset or use private submission content to train a general-purpose model. Public bounty descriptions and material you intentionally mark public may be displayed and promoted as part of operating the marketplace.

6. Your assurances

By submitting, you confirm that:

• You have authority to submit the material and make every rights and provenance declaration shown.
• Collection, transformation, and delivery comply with law, contracts, website terms, access controls, and applicable privacy obligations.
• The submission does not contain hidden malware, credentials, stolen data, or prohibited material.
• Source and license details are complete enough for a reasonable buyer to understand permitted use and material restrictions.
• You will cooperate with a reasonable rights, fraud, payment, or provenance investigation.

7. Attribution and credit

If the accepted license requires attribution, the buyer must preserve it in the form required by that license. If you want personal or business credit beyond the license requirement, put it in the custom license details before freezing the submission.

ineeddata may identify your public display name in transaction history or marketplace features only as described by the service and Privacy Policy. Private contact information is not public attribution.

8. Reward and payout rights

• A winning contributor is entitled to 85% of the advertised reward the buyer pays at acceptance, subject to Stripe eligibility, applicable withholding, fraud review, disputes, and law.
• ineeddata retains 15% only after payment-confirmed acceptance.
• You must complete Stripe connected-account onboarding before funds can be transferred.
• Stripe may delay external payout while it verifies identity, reviews risk, or waits for funds to become available.
• You are an independent marketplace participant, not an employee, worker, or agent of ineeddata or the buyer.

A chargeback, payment reversal, material fraud finding, or proven rights violation may pause a pending transfer or support recovery of a completed transfer as explained in the Refunds & Disputes Policy.

9. Rejected and removed submissions

A rejection does not transfer the full bundle or create a paid transaction license. ineeddata may retain limited frozen records, hashes, audit evidence, and transaction metadata as needed for security, dispute resolution, legal compliance, and enforcement. Private files are not made public merely because a submission was rejected.

We may restrict or remove a submission that creates legal, privacy, safety, security, or intellectual-property risk. Removal from the platform cannot revoke rights already granted under an independently effective public license.

10. Rights complaints and takedowns

If you believe a bounty or submission infringes your rights, contact us with the URL or identifier, the work at issue, your relationship to it, the reason you believe use is unauthorized, and a reliable way to reach you. Knowingly false reports may harm other users and violate law.

We may restrict access while we investigate, ask for additional evidence, notify the affected participant, and preserve records needed to resolve the claim.