Here is the rule that settles 90% of UGC disputes: you own the copyright to content you create, automatically, the moment you create it. A brand gets exactly the rights your agreement grants — for exactly the duration, channels, and purposes it names — and nothing more. Everything else in this article is detail on top of that rule. (General information, not legal advice.)
The four dimensions of usage rights
Every UGC brief, contract, or DM-agreement is really answering four questions. If any of them is unanswered, that ambiguity works against whoever wants to rely on it — usually the brand:
- Duration — 30 days, 90 days, 6 months, 1 year, or "in perpetuity." The market norm for paid usage is 30–90 days, renewable. Perpetuity is a premium ask and should be priced like one.
- Channels — organic social only? Paid ads? Website, email, packaging, retail displays? "Organic use" does not include running your face as a paid ad.
- Exclusivity — can you make similar content for competitors? Exclusivity has a price separate from usage.
- Modification — can they crop, re-edit, dub, or (increasingly) AI-modify your content? If the brief doesn't say, they shouldn't.
When the window closes, the rights end
A 90-day paid-usage license means that on day 91, the ad comes down. In practice, it often doesn't — not out of malice, but because the person who booked you left, the asset sat in an ad rotation, or an agency copied it into a new campaign. It doesn't matter: use beyond the licensed window is unlicensed use, the same as if there had never been an agreement. It is also the most common overrun in the creator economy, and the least monitored.
"But they paid me" — for what, exactly?
Payment for content creation is not payment for unlimited usage. If a brand paid a flat fee and the agreement only covered organic posting, running the same clip as a paid ad is outside the license. This is why usage rights are itemized separately from creation fees in every professional rate card — and why you should keep every brief, email, and DM where terms were discussed. That paper trail defines the license.
What if there was no written agreement at all?
Then the default applies: you own everything, and the brand has at most an implied license for whatever was clearly agreed (e.g., they reposted the video you tagged them in, with credit). Commercial use — ads, product pages, packaging — is very hard to justify under an implied license. If a brand is running your content commercially with no agreement, read what to do when a brand uses your content in an ad.
Enforcement starts with knowing
None of these rights matter if you don't know the overrun is happening. Brands don't send a notification when a license expires and the ad keeps running. That's a monitoring problem: see how to find out if a brand is still using your content — including doing it automatically with an invisible watermark in everything you deliver.