Here's the good news. On the major platforms, that's generally not how it works. You keep ownership of your work. What you hand over is a licence: permission for the platform to host it, show it and share it.
Here's the less good news. Knowing you own something and being able to show it are two very different things. The second one is where most creators come unstuck.
01"I own it" is true. It just doesn't help when you need to show it.
In most countries, copyright in your original work belongs to you from the moment you make it. No form, no fee. (This isn't legal advice, and the rules vary by country, so check what applies where you live.)
That's great, right up until someone disputes it. A repost that won't come down. A clip lifted into someone else's edit. Your footage turning up in an ad you never agreed to. Suddenly "it's mine" is a claim, and a claim needs something behind it.
For most creators, the only thing behind it is the upload itself. And that lives on someone else's platform, inside someone else's account system.
02What you actually agree to when you post
Every platform spells this out in its terms. Almost nobody reads them, which is fair. They're long. Here's what the three biggest say, in plain English. (Checked October 2026.)
YouTube
YouTube's terms are clear that you keep your ownership rights. In return, you give YouTube a worldwide, royalty-free licence to use, copy, distribute and adapt your videos in connection with its service and its business, and you let other viewers watch and share them through YouTube. Read YouTube's Terms of Service
TikTok
TikTok's terms confirm the copyright stays with you. The licence you give is wide: worldwide, royalty-free, transferable and irrevocable. It lets TikTok, and other users, reproduce, adapt and redistribute what you post, and TikTok's current terms also cover using your content to improve its own systems and models. The exact wording varies by region. Read TikTok's Terms of Service
Instagram says it doesn't claim ownership of your content. You give it a worldwide, royalty-free licence that it can transfer and sub-license, covering hosting, using, distributing, modifying, copying, displaying, translating and making new works from your content. That licence ends when your content is deleted from its systems. Read Instagram's Terms of Use
Same pattern on all three: you own the work, and the platform gets a broad, free, worldwide licence to use it.
Worth knowing too: owning your work and keeping your account are separate questions. If you've ever wondered what happens to your videos when a channel disappears, we've covered that as well.
03Owning it and proving it are two different things
Everything above answers one question: who owns the work. Almost nothing online answers the next one. How do you show it?
Ownership you can assert is what you've got by default. Ownership you can prove is different. It's a record that sits outside the platform, made when you made the work, that anyone can check without having to take your word for it.
That second part deserves its own page, so we gave it one.
04How JubJub closes the gap
Register your work when you make it, and JubJub creates a dated, publicly checkable record of who registered it and when. That record lives on Base, a public blockchain, so it doesn't sit inside any platform account and doesn't need anyone's permission to exist.
Register at upload and the record also shows the file hasn't changed since.
That's the short version. The full picture lives on the provenance page.
05What this does not do
We'd rather you know exactly what you're getting. So, plainly:
06What you can do today
None of this needs JubJub to get started.
Read the licence section of each platform you post on.
It's usually a few paragraphs. The links are above.
Keep your original files somewhere you control.
Not just on the platform, and not only on your phone.
Register new work when you make it.
Not after a dispute starts. By then, the timing is the whole problem.
07Once it's yours, make it pay
Being able to show a piece of work is yours is the first step. The next one is getting paid for it.
