With information from: https://www.asuntoslegales.com.co/consultorio/la-convergencia-entre-tiktok-y-los- Derechos-de-propiedad-intelectual-3423951

To understand the importance of Tik Tok, we must first highlight that this application has currently 800 million active users worldwide; becoming the fourth application with the most active users worldwide, having only ahead the big ones such as WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram.

Given this reality, it has become essential to respond to the content that is created within the application, the use of existing works, and their impact on the legal world. For this reason, it should be firstly differentiated the protection granted by copyright in the USA and copyright in Mexico. Copyright in Mexico recognizes that a work belongs to a specific natural person with moral rights inherent to the author, while copyright in the USA reflects that the rights are reserved, thus it protects economic rights.

In this sense, we can affirm that author rights and/or copyright do exist; Although Tik Tok may use your content for commercial purposes, the author of the video is the author and owner of the copyright of each video that is published on the platform.

Likewise, Tik Tok in its terms and conditions makes special mention for more than 11 times about copyright and the prohibition of loading any material in the application that may represent an infringement of copyright. In addition to this, they require users to offer a free license so that other people can download their content without a problem.

But the obligatory question is: What happens with the songs used in the videos? The music that is available on the platform is for legal use, so it can be used in the videos since Tik Tok pays for use licenses and have a music library available to avoid legal problems. The social network contemplates the assumption of possible infringement of copyright against the use of songs, saying that any video that contains a copyright-protected song without authorization will be removed from the platform. This is why, as an additional protection measure, the company ByteDance (owner of Tik Tok) signed an agreement with Universal Music Group, whereby ByteDance undertakes to pay a sum of money so that a compensation is paid to artists for the use of their music within the platform.

And the rights in dance sequences? Even though dancers and choreographers have spoken out saying that the dances have been used without their consent to create content on the social network, this is a critical point to deal with since, as the videos are really short, they could not be protected by intellectual property, since so far only choreographies are protected, that is, an arrangement with a series of movements that form a coherent sequence, but the duration of the Tik Tok videos is so short that they are only considered dance steps and therefore could not enjoy protection.

What happens if you violate copyrights on Tik Tok? On TikTok, any video that violates copyright is removed by the platform. Why? Because the social network is protected by the “safe harbor” provision of the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act).

Finally, we consider important to mention some recommendations to avoid publishing a video that may violate copyright:

  • Use public works.
  • Make mention of the work in which your Tik Tok was inspired.
  • Respect the content of other creators.
  • Avoid as much as possible using content that you are not sure whether or not violates copyrights.