October 28, 2025
The cost of “acceptance”: what does your company grant to digital platforms?
CapCut Terms of Service Update Raises Red Flag for Risk Management and Intellectual Property Protection
In the dynamic universe of digital marketing, agility is the most valuable currency. Tools that promise to optimize content creation, such as the popular video editing platform CapCut, have become ubiquitous, integrated into the workflow of agencies, startups, and even large corporations. With an intuitive interface and a robust range of “free” features, the app, belonging to tech giant ByteDance, has consolidated itself as an almost standard solution for producing videos for TikTok, reels, and shorts. However, a recent update to its terms of service, implemented in mid-2025, exposed an uncomfortable reality, issuing us a warning: what is the true price of convenience? (CapCut, 2025; TechRadar, 2025).
On June 12, 2025, CapCut published changes to its Terms of Use that began to explicitly grant a broad, royalty-free license over content submitted by users, and the company communicated these changes through its official channels. Given the platform’s scale, which is already pointed out by specialized media (Business Insider, 2025; Influencer Marketing Hub, 2024) as having surpassed the mark of over one billion downloads globally, the changes resonate extensively and impact both individual creators and teams and companies that use the tool in professional workflows.
The episode serves as a fundamental case study for managers and leaders. It reveals a growing tension between the speed demanded by the market and the diligence required to protect a company’s most valuable assets: its intellectual property, its data, and its reputation. This article proposes an in-depth analysis of the strategic implications behind a simple click of the “Accept” button, demonstrating the urgent need for a new playbook for digital communication governance.
Decoding the fine print
To understand the dimension of the risk, it is necessary to dissect the legal language of the CapCut adhesion contract, a classic “take-it-or-leave-it” model, and confront it with solid Brazilian legislation. Four clauses stand out for their controversial nature.
The first, and most alarming, is the one that establishes the usage license. By uploading any content, the user grants the platform a “worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, and sublicensable license”. In practice, this means that ByteDance acquires the right to use, modify, reproduce, distribute, and even commercialize user content (including private videos and unpublished drafts) forever, anywhere in the world, without the need for new authorization or any financial compensation. Such an unrestricted assignment of rights clashes with the Copyright Law (Law 9.610/1998), which protects the moral rights of the author, and with article 51 of the Consumer Defense Code (CDC), which prohibits clauses that place the consumer at an exaggerated disadvantage.
The second point of friction is the prerogative of unilateral modification of terms and functionalities. The platform reserves the right to change prices and services at any time, with minimal prior notice. This practice challenges items X and XIII of article 51 of the CDC, which prohibit arbitrary changes that unbalance the contractual relationship, offering little or no room for negotiation to the user.
Third, the limitation of liability clause is particularly noteworthy. In case of failures, data loss, or other damages, the platform limits its compensation to a symbolic amount (the total paid in the last 12 months, in the case of a Pro subscription user, or US$ 50). This is an attempt to disclaim responsibilities that, according to the CDC, are inherent to the provision of the service, effectively nullifying the right to compensation for damages.
Finally, the imposition of mandatory jurisdiction and arbitration in Singapore, with proceedings conducted in English, creates an almost insurmountable legal and financial barrier for the vast majority of Brazilian users and companies. This clause, which restricts access to the national Judiciary, is subject to a declaration of nullity when it impedes Brazilian consumers’ access to justice, an understanding recently reaffirmed by the Superior Court of Justice (STJ) when deciding that the choice of foreign jurisdiction in a contract of adhesion may be considered null if it represents an obstacle to consumer access to justice (STJ, 2025).
The domino effect
When these abstract clauses are applied to the routine of a business, the risks become tangible and multifaceted. For a marketing manager, the implications go far beyond an individual legal dispute.
Imagine a common scenario: a financial technology (fintech) startup uses CapCut to create an explainer video about a new feature of its application. The video contains the company’s logo, the software interface (which is an intellectual asset), the image of collaborators, and market data.
By uploading this material, the company may be contractually licensing all these elements to ByteDance. This content could be legally reused in a competitor’s ad in Asia, used to train a third-party artificial intelligence model, or simply leaked, compromising a strategic launch. The responsibility for any misuse of third-party elements in the video (such as an unlicensed soundtrack) still falls entirely on the user, not the platform.
The danger extends to brand management and customer relationship. User-Generated Content (UGC) campaigns, which encourage customers to create and share their experiences with a product, lose their strategic value. The creative and authentic content generated by the public, when edited and posted through these tools, may have its primary rights transferred to the platform, depriving the brand of using its own social capital.
From a corporate governance perspective, the phenomenon of “Shadow IT” – where teams adopt technologies without the supervision of the Legal or IT department – flourishes in this environment. The definition and risks associated with Shadow IT are widely documented by market analysts (Gartner, n.d.), who warn of the need for visibility and control over software and services used outside the IT domain.
Similarly, digital risk management frameworks and governance recommendations presented by consultancies such as McKinsey reinforce the need for inventory, risk classification, and systematic remediation as essential practices to mitigate operational and reputational exposure (McKinsey & Company, 2025).
The ease of access to these tools creates a silent vulnerability, exposing the organization to risks that top leadership has not even mapped, ranging from data breaches (considering the extensive collection of information by the platform) to the loss of trade secrets.
From reaction to strategic action
The answer to this complex challenge cannot be paralysis. Prohibiting the use of innovative tools is counterproductive. The solution lies in creating a digital security culture and implementing an internal “playbook creative“, a governance guide that aligns the legal, marketing, and information technology teams.
The first step is to perform a digital tool audit(Gartner; McKinsey & Company). This process involves mapping all the software used, analyzing their terms of service, assessing the risks of each, and classifying them according to security levels. One tool may be considered safe for general use, while another may be restricted to internal non-confidential projects, and a third, strictly prohibited.
Based on this audit, the next step is to develop clear and accessible usage policies. Instead of an intimidating legal document, the policy should be a practical guide that directs the employee on what can and cannot be done.
For example: “For external campaign videos with branded assets, use only licensed software [Software Name A]. For quick edits of non-sensitive content for social media, tools [B and C] are permitted. For confidential material, no online editing tools should be used”.
The third pillar is continuous training. It is not enough to create the rules; teams must understand the reasoning behind them. Workshops that simulate risks and demonstrate the practical implications of a data breach or the loss of intellectual property are much more effective than simply communicating a new standard.
Finally, it is fundamental that leadership views the acquisition of secure alternatives not as a cost, but as a strategic investment in risk mitigation and asset protection. The market offers professional solutions that guarantee full content ownership and data security.
Thus, below is a practical checklist for using similar platforms safely:
• Review terms of use before adopting new platforms: check license clauses, sublicensing, jurisdiction, and limitation of liability;
• Avoid using “free” tools for strategic or confidential material – prefer licensed software when the asset is sensitive;
• Inventory (audit) all tools used by the team (map Shadow IT) and classify by risk;
• Define clear internal policies (who can use what, in which contexts) and approval routes for material with brand assets;
• Implement practical training and risk simulations (workshops on leaks, IP loss, and reputational impact);
• Require minimum contractual clauses with suppliers (guarantee of non-appropriation of moral rights/authorship, obligation to notify in case of leaks);
• Review jurisdiction and arbitration clauses: when foreign clauses exist, assess nullity or defensive practices according to current Brazilian jurisprudence;
• Prioritize solutions that ensure control and authorship registration (metadata, hashes, local backups) to preserve evidence in case of dispute.
The CapCut case is an emblematic symptom of an inescapable reality in the digital economy: nothing is truly free. The price of convenience is often paid with the cession of rights and exposure to risks that can compromise a business’s sustainability. Agility, so celebrated in modern marketing, cannot serve as a pretext for strategic negligence. Clicking the “accept” button without due analysis is, in itself, an act of management with legal and patrimonial consequences. True innovation, therefore, lies not only in the ability to create creative and impactful campaigns but also in the wisdom to conceive, execute, and protect these assets securely and sovereignly, ensuring that control of the narrative remains where it should be: in the hands of those who created it.
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Who wrote this column
Fiona Maria
