Caution: CapCut Changed Their License and – MAY – Own Your Content!

Earlier this month, CapCut (owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company) sent tremors through the online video community with a change in their Terms of Service license.

Here’s the relevant section:

“Except as expressly provided otherwise in these Terms, you or the owner of your User Content still own the copyright and any other intellectual property rights in User Content submitted to us, but by submitting User Content via the Services, you acknowledge and agree that you allow us to upload such content to our server and hereby grant us and our affiliates, agents, services providers, partners and other connected third parties an unconditional, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free, fully transferable (including sub-licensable), perpetual, worldwide license to use, modify, adapt, reproduce, make derivative works of, display, publish, transmit, distribute and/or store your User Content for providing the Services for you.”

In other words, CapCut can do whatever they want with your media, including using it to train AI LLMs.

There are two issues here:

1. This language is not unique. As Reddit user TheRealSonicStarTrek (link) points out, this language is very similar to that of YouTube, Canva, Instagram, Facebook, Spotify, Twitch, StreamLabs, StreamYard, and PowerDirector. [He also lists Adobe Premiere, but their language and grant of rights is not the same as the others.]

Clearly, while Cloud services are convenient, there is no free lunch. If you post it, you lose a lot of control over it.

2. Editing using CapCut is not the same as posting a video to CapCut. What was missed in the ensuing brouhaha was one key phrase in this paragraph: “submitted to us.”

If you use CapCut to edit material, without uploading it to their Cloud service, CapCut has no rights to your work. This transfer of rights to CapCut only occurs when you upload your video to CapCut’s servers.

As TheRealSonicStarTrek writes: “Corporations like ByteDance aren’t trying to steal your content, they’re trying to provide services to hundreds of millions of people whilst also avoiding all potential lawsuits from things outside their control.”

SUMMARY

Regardless of where you post content, you still own it. But, if you post to a service like YouTube or CapCut or FaceBook et al, you no longer control its distribution or price.

This grant of rights is perpetual, global, royalty-free, and sublicensable – which means they can transfer or allow others to use your content as they see fit.

This ONLY affects content posted online to CapCut’s servers. It does not apply to anything edited off-line and stored locally; or, more specifically, not stored on CapCut servers.