Free apps are pretty awesome. It's cool to be able to do all sorts of things, like edit videos and more, for free. But free apps sometimes have big problems, and CapCut, which has long been one of the best free video editors, has gone to that problematic end and dipped so deep that I can no longer recommend using it to anyone. What am I talking about? Well, its new terms of use, which give the company behind CapCut absolutely insane rights. Let's talk a little more about this and why everyone should stop using CapCut immediately. Imagine the following situation. You've created a great-looking music video for your client using CapCut. It gets praise and views and everyone is happy with it. Then you realize that CapCut is using this music video in its own advertisement without your permission and is not paying you anything. Can you do anything about it? Well actually you don't, because you signed a contract that gives them this right. This is the reality of CapCut's current terms of service. When you download CapCut or otherwise start using it, you have to accept its user agreement, and in it you give the company behind it quite extensive rights. When you use CapCut, you grant ByteDance, which also owns TikTok, an unconditional, irrevocable, exclusive, royalty-free, fully transferable, perpetual, and worldwide license to basically everything you do with it. What does this mean in practice? Well, in Finnish, they can, among other things, sell your videos, which you have made with CapCut, to third parties. Use your video in their own advertising, modify it to the point where it is completely unrecognizable, create derivative works with it, and even ban you from using your own content. And because this right is irrevocable, you cannot revoke it later, even if you delete your account. The right remains with CapCut forever. What if you want to sell the same video to another company, you can't guarantee exclusive rights. So if you're a professional video editor using CapCut, everything you do with it is not exclusively for sale. So you can't make a video for your client with CapCut because CapCut already owns the rights, so you can't sell the exclusive rights to the video to anyone, which could otherwise ruin all your commercial opportunities. What could you do with the video? But it gets worse. CapCut also gets access to your username, image, and persona, which means they can use your face in advertising, even in advertising you don't approve of. Think about it this way: you see yourself promoting CapCut's artificial intelligence services, even if you yourself are against the use of artificial intelligence in art. Or maybe your face is being used to promote political content that you hate. The Terms of Service actually give CapCut this right. They might not do that directly, but they could. But it gets even worse. You also waive all rights to pre-review or approval of any advertising materials. This means you cannot demand that your name be mentioned as the author. You can't object even if they edit your work in an offensive way. You cannot deny use, even if it damages your reputation. At the same time, you completely lose your privacy and the protection of honor is violated to the extent permitted by law. This means that you cannot later claim that any use of your content on behalf of CapCut infringes your personal rights. For those who work with music, CapCut is particularly dangerous, as the terms of use claim that you give them full rights to use your music content without the obligation to pay royalties to you or any third party. This includes, among others, record labels, music publishers, copyright organizations such as Teosto, producers and musicians. If you have a contract with a record label, for example , simply using CapCut could actually violate your contract. The record company may demand compensation because you were unable to promise exclusive rights to your music. This is actually also problematic because if you license music and want to use it with CapCut, you may not be able to because CapCut requires that they have all the rights to all the music you push into CapCut. On the other hand, as a member of Teosto, you should declare your royalty-free usage rights to the organization. If you don't do that, you are violating your membership agreement. If you do that, Teosto may question the royalty rights of your other works. One of the most dangerous points in the terms of service concerns the disclosure of your personal information. CapCut may disclose your identity to any third party who even claims that you have violated their intellectual property rights. This means in practice that anyone can make a false copyright claim, after which CapCut will disclose your name, address and contact information to that party and you will have no opportunity to defend yourself before this disclosure. This way, the claimant will get your information, even if the claim is completely unfounded. This can expose you to major threats, harassment, and even misuse of personal information. A competing content creator can thus obtain your information by claiming that you copied their work. And trolls can use this system to phish for personal information. CapCut may terminate your user account at any time, for any reason or no reason. They don't have to warn you in advance, justify their decision, give you time to back up, or even refund any subscription fees you've paid. In practice, this is a huge problem if you're thinking about doing work with CapCut, for example. If you use CapCut full-time, for example, for content production, years of work can be lost in an instant, client projects can be destroyed in the middle, and you will not receive any warning before this deletion and restoration is impossible. And the reason could be anything. An algorithm misinterprets your content, a competitor makes a false report, or a company simply decides to reduce its users. Then a few really bad ones. Among other things, the Terms of Use include a clause that requires you to defend and indemnify CapCut against any and all claims that arise. In Finnish, this means that if CapCut misuses your video and someone sues them, you will have to pay their legal fees, any damages, and your own lawyers. At the same time, their liability to you in any situation is limited to fifty dollars. If you can prove that CapCut caused you some damage, loss of customers, or anything else, and you sue them, fifty dollars is the maximum compensation you can get. So in practice, you will not be compensated for anything, but in any situation, you are the one who has to pay. CapCut's legal structure is quite complex. Its parent company is ByteDance LTD, based in Singapore, but on the other hand, ByteDance Inc also operates in the United States and according to the license agreement you have accepted, all disputes will be resolved under Singapore law and arbitration proceedings in Singapore will be in English. As a Finnish user, you have very little legal protection if you ever want to sue them. You will have to travel to Singapore, where arbitration proceedings will likely cost tens of thousands of euros. And of course the process is in English. And since Singapore is not an EU country, EU consumer protection does not apply either. To top it all off, if anything happens, you have a year to get the legal process moving forward, because after that you have no right to claim anything at all . However, CapCut is not just a free editing program. It is a kind of data collection machine that converts all your creativity into company assets. Every video you upload makes you a little poorer and them a little richer. What should you do now? Well, first of all, back up all your content out of CapCut immediately. Stop uploading new content to the service. Tell this to others who-- who you know use the app and definitely switch to another editing program before your next project. Now it's worth considering substitutes if you're looking for free apps to replace it with. Some options: If you're looking for something more advanced, check out DaVinci Resolve. It's a completely free, professional-level program that doesn't require you to transfer your rights. It also works completely offline, meaning there is no need to send data to any cloud service. Behind it is Black Magic Design, which is an established and reliable company. Other options include Adobe's Premiere Pro. If you also need a pro option like this, which is a bit more expensive, Adobe can also be considered reliable. Sony's former Vegas Pro package is also very competent. There are several options available at different prices. Another editor suitable for basic users is Movavi's video editor, which contains a surprisingly large number of ready-made effects and can actually be a very good option for those switching from CapCut. Of course, it's not free either, but licenses start at a couple of dozen, making this a pretty cheap option to use. If you're looking for free alternatives, there are several cloud-based options, such as Microsoft's Clipchamp, or open source ones such as OpenShot, KDN Live, and Shotgun, which are completely free. Additionally, if you use a Mac, for example, you can find iMovie content directly there , which is also quite easy to use. There are also better alternatives to smartphones. My favorite smartphone to throw at is the Vita. Vita is free to use and allows for all sorts of functions. You can even turn off the watermark in the settings. And actually, ironically, every one of these current social media services where you can put vertical videos has one. So YouTube and Instagram both have their own editors. Ironically, TikTok's internal editor takes fewer rights. So if you want to make vertical videos on TikTok, making them within TikTok instead of using the CapCut app now gives you more legal security here for now. A few more general tips, because this is not the only free app. When you go to accept the terms of use, it's a good idea to note a few terms that usually indicate dangerous user agreements. First of all, irrevocable. The other is eternal, perpetual. Royalty free. Worldwide, and transferable. Their individual presence in the user agreement is not necessarily a problem, but it's worth looking at what-- can you find these terms in the user agreement and if you do, what is said around them, what do they relate to? Since the user agreement may contain quite a few traps in principle, if there are such terms, then it might be a good idea to consider whether you should use the service at all. But what do you think, do you still dare to use CapCutt? Is it so clever that all this we lose in the user agreement is worth it? "I don't know what you think you're getting out of this, but believe me, it's not worth it." Is this unnecessary fearmongering? So, are those terms of use more theoretical and would these threat scenarios never come true, which is actually likely? CapCut may not, no matter how extensive the rights to your content, use all of these rights, but some of them are so dangerous that I personally wouldn't take the risk, no matter how good the editor is. Especially since there are other very good editor applications on the market, both free and paid. Leave your opinions in the comments, and let's continue the discussion there. I hope this video was useful. If so, be sure to subscribe! On my channel, you learn something new about the digital world, artificial intelligence, and the like every single day. Of course, it's also worth becoming a member on YouTube. That way you can see upcoming videos in advance and support the channel. I am very grateful for each and every member. If you want to support in any other way, remember that every like or comment, and even watching the video to the end, of course helps the channel and I am grateful for them. WebOpe thanks and acknowledges.