Who Owns What You Post
You keep the copyright. What you also grant, without reading it, is a very broad licence to the platform, and often to everyone else who touched the work.
Start My Enquiry →You keep the copyright. What you also grant, without reading it, is a very broad licence to the platform, and often to everyone else who touched the work.
Start My Enquiry →Ownership | Platform Terms | Collaborators | Regulation
Yes. Under section 13(1) of the Copyright Act the author is the first owner of copyright, and posting to a platform does not transfer that. What posting does is grant the platform a licence, and those licences are drafted very broadly: typically worldwide, royalty free, sublicensable and transferable, permitting hosting, reproduction, modification, adaptation and distribution for the purpose of operating and promoting the service. That is a licence rather than an assignment, and it matters because section 13(4) provides that no assignment or grant of an interest in copyright is valid unless in writing signed by the owner, which platform terms of service generally are not framed as. The more consequential ownership problems arise closer to home. An editor, videographer or designer engaged as an independent contractor owns copyright in their contribution unless it has been assigned in writing. The employment exception in section 13(3) applies only to works made in the course of employment under a contract of service, which most creator crews are not.
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The recurring worry is that posting hands ownership to the platform. It does not. Copyright stays with the author, and the platform takes a licence, though a very wide one.
The width is the real point. These licences typically permit reproduction, modification, adaptation, creation of derivative works and distribution, worldwide, royalty free, and with the right to sublicense. Sublicensing is the term worth noticing, because it is what allows content to appear in contexts the creator did not choose.
Two limits are worth knowing. The licence is generally tied to operating and promoting the service rather than being at large, and it usually ends when content is removed, subject to caveats for copies already distributed and for cached or backup copies. Neither limit is as protective as it sounds, but both are more protective than the fear that ownership has been given away.
This is where most real ownership problems come from, and they are entirely avoidable. Section 13(1) makes the author first owner. An editor who cuts your video is the author of that editing work. A designer who makes your channel art owns the artwork.
Section 13(3) vests copyright in the employer for work made in the course of employment under a contract of service, absent agreement to the contrary. Most people working with creators are independent contractors, not employees, so the exception does not apply. Paying an invoice is not an assignment.
The fix is a written assignment satisfying section 13(4), signed by the person doing the work, together with a moral rights waiver, since section 14.1(2) provides moral rights cannot be assigned but can be waived and section 14.1(3) that assigning copyright does not by itself waive them. This can be a short paragraph in an engagement email. It does not need to be a formal contract, and its absence causes real difficulty later, particularly on a channel sale.
Two creators making something together without an agreement may end up as joint owners, and joint ownership is more awkward than it sounds. Broadly, joint owners cannot license the work unilaterally without accounting to the other, which means either can frustrate exploitation.
That is fine while everyone is friendly and becomes an obstacle the moment they are not, and it is particularly awkward where one collaborator wants to license the work commercially and the other has lost interest or become uncontactable.
A short collaboration agreement addresses it: who owns the resulting work, who may license it, how income is split, and what happens to it if the collaboration ends. Three or four sentences do the job, and the discussion is far easier before the work exists.
The Online Streaming Act received Royal Assent on 27 April 2023, bringing online undertakings within the Broadcasting Act. Much of the public argument concerned whether it would regulate individual creators, and the statutory answer is more reassuring than the debate suggested.
Section 2(2.1) provides that a person who uses a social media service to upload programs, and who is not the provider or its affiliate or agent, does not by that fact carry on a broadcasting undertaking. Section 4.1(1) then provides that the Act does not apply to a program uploaded to a social media service by a user of the service.
The qualification is section 4.1(2)(b), which allows the Act to apply to programs prescribed by regulation under section 4.2, and section 4.2(2) directs the regulator to consider whether a program directly or indirectly generates revenues, whether it has been broadcast by a licensed undertaking, and whether it has been assigned a unique identifier under an international standards system. The safeguards are that regulations must be made in a manner consistent with freedom of expression, must be published in advance for comment, and that the regulator may not make a discoverability order requiring use of a specific algorithm or source code. This area is still developing and anything specific should be checked against the current position rather than assumed.
If you work with editors, designers or collaborators, a short assignment in your standard engagement email solves nearly all of this. We can draft one you reuse.
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