Is clipping legal? Copyright, permission and the apps' rules

A video belongs to whoever made it, and so does any clip cut from it. Posting a clip of someone else's video means publishing part of their work, which the law leaves to them to allow. With their permission, clipping is a normal, legal job: it's what clipping campaigns pay for. Without it, your clips can be taken down, and your account can be penalized or closed.

This guide is general information about how this works on the apps, not legal advice. For a question about your own situation, ask a lawyer where you live.

• Clipping campaigns. A creator or brand invites clippers to post clips of their videos and pays per view. The campaign's rules are the permission: which videos, which apps, what the posts must include. Stay inside them.
• Creators' clip programs. Some creators and streamers run their own, with rules on their site, their Discord or the campaign page.
• A direct yes. If you ask a creator yourself, get it in writing (an email or a message is enough) and keep it.
• Your own videos. Yours to clip however you like.

Credit isn't permission. “All rights to the owner” or tagging the creator doesn't make a clip allowed. Credit them anyway, and keep the permission too.

In the US, fair use lets people use copyrighted work without permission in some cases, like criticism, commentary or news. Courts weigh four things:

1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether it's commercial, and whether it adds something new.
2. The nature of the work.
3. How much of the work is used, and how important that part is.
4. The effect on the market for, or value of, the original.

There's no amount of a video that's automatically safe, and no words that make a clip fair use. YouTube says itself that its automated systems can't decide fair use. A clip that posts the best minute of someone's video, for the same audience and to earn from it, is hard to defend as fair use. Other countries have their own, often narrower, rules. Treat fair use as a defence a court might accept, not a reason to skip asking.

On YouTube, a claim usually affects only the video, while a strike counts against the channel. A strike expires after 90 days only if you complete YouTube's Copyright School; otherwise it stays on the channel. You can also have it retracted by whoever made the claim, or send a counter-notification if you believe it's a mistake.

Copyright decides whether a clip can stay up. The apps also decide whether to show it to people, and they favour original posts:

• TikTok keeps unoriginal or reused material without anything new out of the For You feed, such as reposted clips that show someone else's watermark or logo. Its Creator Rewards Program pays only for original content you made yourself.
• Instagram doesn't recommend content repurposed with only minor edits. Same-language subtitles, borders that change the shape and credits in the caption don't count as making it original. It replaces copies with the original in recommendations, and accounts that mostly post unoriginal content may not be recommended to new audiences.
• YouTube doesn't pay channels for reused content, like others' videos posted without significant original commentary or changes, and that applies even with the creator's permission. Since October 2026 it also says channels that mostly re-upload other creators' videos will likely get less reach in the Shorts feed.

For clippers, that means a repost isn't a clip. Choose the moment, cut it to its hook and payoff, frame it for a phone, caption it and give it its own opening line. Campaigns are built around exactly that, and pay for the views it gets.

1. Clip only with permission: a campaign, a clip program or a written yes. Keep a copy of it.
2. Read the campaign's rules before your first clip: which videos, which apps, what the posts must include.
3. Make your own clips. Cut, frame and caption each one yourself. Never repost a clip from another account or app.
4. Leave out what you weren't given. Music, clips from TV or films, and other people's footage inside the video may belong to someone else, even when the creator said yes.
5. Credit the creator in every post, the way the campaign asks.
6. Take a claim seriously. If a clip is claimed or taken down, find out why before you post more like it.