On June 12, 2025, CapCut, a free TikTok parent ByteDance video editing app, has revised. and users are not pleased. The new provision gives CapCut and partners broad, perpetual rights to any digital media you post on their platform even before it even leaves the platform, including your facial expression, voice or likeness.
We called lawyer Bert P. His advice? Be cautious.
Why creators are getting nervous
The new conditions weigh in that CapCut receives:
an unconditional, irrevocable, non exclusive, royalty free, assignment without limitation (including sub licence), perpetual, worldwide license to use, modify, adapt… display… publish… distribute… store your User Content.
This would permit CapCut to legally use your voice memos, unpublished drafts, and customer agreements, or even sell the rights to the third party without your additional approval or compensation.
Your image is their liberty
The language also permits ByteDance to capture your image, name, and voice, so they can identify you as the author, even in ad-supported materials. Just imagine a scenario where you wake up and your face or your voice appears in a TikTok advertisement without your knowledge or even compensation.
Krages terms this as ominous and points out the fact that what you felt was personal may be shown everywhere and at any time.
Is it the rights grab or legal cover?
Krages observed that though these clauses are general, it is the legal protection of server-stored content that could be the only simple explanation. The vagueness, however, is troubling: similarly worded syntax could provide ByteDance with the ability to sublicense your content on its behalf.
A deja vu of creators
Such rights grab is not unprecedented, and even with CapCut, it goes even further. The sublicensable clause is perpetual, and includes drafts that are not published, and its lack of an opt-out makes it notable.
Claudia Sandino, a spokesperson at Omnivore, cautions that it has aspects of editing tool and content publisher, giving CapCut liberties that creators typically do not want to lose.
Why ByteDance probably desires this
What is behind the legalese is that ByteDance gets enormous advantage by controlling giant oceans of user-generated content to train its AI, market and display advertisements. Combining CapCut both as a creator and distributor is reinforcing the ByteDance platform.
The aftermath of pros & journalists
Reporters and developers are at an additional risk. This is why sensitive or customer-related footage on CapCut may be re-used without permission, perhaps even in commercial projects. Unless you edit offline exclusively, Krages suggests to treat any uploads on CapCut as public domain.
Reddit’s perspective
Others say that it is merely boilerplate just like any social media, you post, you lose your rights. According to one redditor:
You retain your rights to the content you create… any modification of your work that you do not upload will not be shared under that license.
Their advice? Edit off-line to remain safe.
Actions step creators can undertake at the moment
- Edit locally-Unless it is needed, do not use cloud offered by CapCut.
- Store locally, and export completed videos to remote destinations.
- Read the conditions and make sure to check the licensing condition (Section 10).
- Or have the full control over your content and switch to an alternative such as DaVinci Resolve, Adobe Premiere, or Final Cut or Kdenlive.
Is CapCut worth it?
CapCut is powerful and free when you do casual clips editing but are interested in personal materials. However, the license may make the app too dangerous to be worth risking particularly if you are a creator/pro/journalist or marketer. You are literally selling your right to control the content- and perhaps your image as well.
Suppose you loaned a friend your automobile to drive in a short trip–and that in giving him the keys you have given him liberty to sell it, to repaint it, to lend it to others, irrevocably. That is the scale of your agreeing.
Conclusion
The June 2025 agreement between CapCut and ByteDance takes extreme liberties with everything being put up by you, even drafts that are not actually shown to other people, your face, and your voice. The right people are telling us that it is dubious legalese and possibly a rights grab, whether it is buried in boiler plate or not. In case you like control over editing, do it offline or move to more understandable and creator-friendly terms.
Keep yourself updated, read between the lines and make the right decisions.
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