Yes, this story broke months ago. No, it hasn’t gotten better. CapCut still has the same Terms of Service, still has the same meaningless clarification page, and millions of creators are still uploading their work to this IP-harvesting dumpster fire every day. If you’re one of them, this is your reminder to stop.
In late June 2025, CapCut—the video editing app owned by ByteDance—published a clarification page addressing “confusion” about its Terms of Service. The statement was reassuring: CapCut has “never claimed ownership of users’ work,” the company wrote, and would never “use or monetize your content or likeness without your permission.” https://www.capcut.com/resource/about-capcut-terms-of-service?from_page=landing_page&enter_from=a1.b1.c1.0
There’s one problem. The actual Terms of Service say something different.
I’m not a lawyer. I shouldn’t have to be one to use video editing software. But apparently that’s where we are now.
What You’re Actually Agreeing To (Since Nobody Reads These Things)
Buried in Section 10 of CapCut’s Terms of Service is a paragraph that every creator should read but nobody will. When you upload content to the platform—whether it’s a polished video, a rough draft, or audio clips—you grant CapCut:
“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.”
Let me translate the legalese:
Unconditional: No strings attached. They don’t owe you anything before using your stuff however they want.
Irrevocable: You can’t take this back. Delete your account? Too bad. Still theirs to use.
Royalty-free: They’ll never pay you a cent. Not now. Not ever.
Fully transferable (including sub-licensable): They can hand these rights to whoever they want—partners, advertisers, AI companies—who can then do whatever they want with it.
Perpetual: Forever. As in, until the heat death of the universe.
Worldwide: Every country. No exceptions.
But wait, there’s more. The Terms also grant CapCut “a royalty-free fully transferable (including sub-licensable), worldwide license to use your username, image and likeness to identify you as the source of any of your User Content, including for use in sponsored content.”
Your face. Your name. In their ads. Forever. For free. That’s what “sponsored content” means here.
“We Would Never Do That” Is Not a Contract
CapCut’s clarification page says this concern “would go against our commitment to empowering authentic creativity and supporting creators’ rights.”
Great. Put it in the contract then.
They didn’t. Because they don’t want to be legally bound by it. The clarification page is PR. It’s marketing. It’s the corporate equivalent of “trust me, bro.”
The Terms of Service is the contract. When you click “I Agree,” you’re agreeing to the legal text, not to what some blog post says the legal text really means in their hearts.
If ByteDance ever decides to exercise the full extent of its license—using your content for AI training, sublicensing it to third parties, slapping your face on a billboard—the clarification page is worth exactly nothing in court. Zero. It’s not part of the agreement.
Funny How They Never Mentioned AI
CapCut’s clarification never mentions artificial intelligence. Funny, that.
The legal text doesn’t need to say “AI training” explicitly—the rights it grants are exactly the ones needed to feed content into generative AI models. This isn’t a loophole. It’s the front door.
The license to “reproduce,” “adapt,” “modify,” and “make derivative works of” user content covers every technical process involved in machine learning. Training an AI model means reproducing content, creating derivative works, and adapting learned patterns. That’s literally what those words mean. Any IP lawyer would tell you the same.
The sublicensing clause makes it worse. CapCut can transfer these rights to unnamed “affiliates, agents, services providers, partners and other connected third parties.” Your content could be flowing to third-party AI companies right now. You’d never know. They don’t have to tell you.
The Terms even spell out how broad this is: “the rights granted in the preceding paragraphs of this Section include, but are not limited to, the right to reproduce sound recordings (and make mechanical reproductions of the musical works embodied in such sound recordings).”
“Include, but are not limited to.” Classic tech bullshit.
Musicians Get Screwed the Hardest
If you’re a musician or composer, there’s a special clause just for you. And it’s brutal.
The license isn’t just royalty-free to CapCut—the agreement explicitly waives payments that would normally flow through performing rights organizations. You know, the organizations that exist specifically to make sure musicians get paid.
The Terms state you’re granting CapCut “the right to use your User Content without the obligation to pay royalties to you or any third party, including, but not limited to, a sound recording copyright owner (e.g. a record label), a musical work copyright owner (e.g. a music publisher), a performing rights organization (e.g. ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, etc.).”
They literally named the organizations they won’t be paying.
And if you’re affiliated with a PRO? The Terms say you “must notify your PRO or CMO of the royalty-free license you grant through these Terms.”
So not only are you waiving your own royalties, you’re supposed to call up ASCAP and explain that you gave away the farm for a free video editor. Good luck with that conversation.
And here’s the real kicker: you don’t even have to be the one who uploads your music. Someone else can upload a video using your song—without your permission, illegally—and CapCut still gets the license. The Terms require uploaders to have the rights to what they upload, but if they don’t? CapCut’s covered. They point to the Terms, say “that user violated our agreement, not us,” and they still have your content on their servers under a license that came from someone who had no right to grant it.
The Terms even spell this out: “You must own your User Content or have obtained all necessary rights, licenses, and clearances of any and all elements of your User Content.” That’s a requirement for users. Not a protection for the people whose work gets uploaded without consent. CapCut gets to keep the license and point fingers at the uploader. You get to pound sand.
Your Creative Control? Gone.
The Terms include waivers of “moral rights”—the right to be credited, the right to object to butchering of your work, the right to approve how your creation is used. These protections exist in most countries specifically to protect creators.
CapCut’s Terms: “you waive any rights to prior inspection or approval of any marketing, advertising or promotional materials related to such User Content. You also waive (to the extent permitted by applicable law) any and all rights of privacy, publicity, or any other rights of a similar nature in connection with your User Content.”
And: “We, or authorised third parties, reserve the right to cut, crop, edit or refuse to upload your content in our or their sole discretion.”
They can chop up your video, remix it, alter it beyond recognition—and you’ll never see it, never approve it, never know it happened. “Sole discretion” means they don’t even have to pretend to care what you think.
Their Explanation Explains Nothing
CapCut says terms like “irrevocable” and “perpetual” exist “because once content (such as a template) is shared and used by others, we can’t undo every instance of reuse or remixing across the platform or internet.”
Okay. Fine. That explains template sharing. It does not explain:
The right to use content in sponsored advertising
The right to sublicense content to unnamed third parties
The explicit waiver of PRO payments
The right to use your likeness in promotional materials
Rights that persist after you delete your account
The public statement presents a narrow, reasonable use case—template sharing—while the legal text claims rights that go wildly beyond anything required for a video editor to function.
If they only needed these rights for templates, they could have written terms that only apply to templates. They didn’t. Draw your own conclusions.
“Everyone Does It” Is a Terrible Defense
Yes, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube have similar language. Adobe faced backlash over terms that worried users about AI training.
So what? That doesn’t make it okay. It means the whole industry has decided to help itself to your work and hopes you won’t notice.
There’s also a key difference: when you post to TikTok, you’re publishing. You know it’s public. When you save a draft to CapCut’s cloud, you might reasonably assume it’s private. Wrong. The Terms apply equally to both. Unpublished drafts, works-in-progress, raw footage—same license as finished, public work.
That draft you saved to the cloud while you figured out the edit? Fair game.
What You Should Probably Do
If you’re using CapCut for professional work—especially content under NDAs or client agreements—uploading to the platform grants ByteDance rights that may conflict with your obligations. You might already be in breach of contracts you’ve signed. Fun.
Things to consider:
Read the actual Terms. Not summaries. Not clarifications. Not this article. The legal text at capcut.com/clause/terms-of-service.
Cloud-synced drafts count. Same license as published content. If it touched their servers, it’s covered.
For sensitive work, use offline editors. DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro don’t require your content to touch third-party servers.
If you’re a musician, talk to your PRO (Performing Rights Organization). The Terms create obligations the PRO will definitely want to know about.
Assume every right in the contract will be exercised. If it’s in there, someone at ByteDance thought they might want to use it someday. Plan accordingly.
The Bottom Line
CapCut is good software. It made video editing accessible to a lot of people who couldn’t afford Premiere. That part is genuinely valuable.
But here’s the trade you’re making: in exchange for a free or cheap editing tool, you grant a tech conglomerate perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide rights to your creative work. They can sublicense it to anyone. Use it for anything. Pay you nothing. Forever. And they wrote a nice FAQ explaining why you shouldn’t worry about any of that, while very carefully not putting any of those reassurances in the actual contract.
Intentions aren’t contracts. A blog post isn’t a legal document. The Terms of Service is the agreement. And the agreement says what it says.
Again: I’m not a lawyer. If this actually matters to your livelihood, talk to one. But the fact that using a video editor now requires legal consultation tells you everything you need to know about how broken this system is.
CapCut’s full Terms of Service: https://capcut.com/clause/terms-of-service. Section 10, “User-Generated Content.” Read it yourself. It’s not long. It’s just bad.