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Use a YouTube video without permission: the 7 cases

September 6, 202613 min read
Young creator at a desk in the evening, watching a video on a laptop with an open notebook beside the keyboard

Can you use a YouTube video without permission to cut it into vertical clips? Almost always no, with four specific exceptions. This article walks through those four, then through the three excuses creators give themselves that do not hold up, quoting what YouTube and TikTok write in their own public policies.

TL;DR

  • Copyright happens automatically. YouTube puts it plainly: when someone creates original work, like a YouTube video, they usually own the copyright to it.
  • YouTube's Terms of Service forbid reproducing, downloading or redistributing Content, with only three exceptions: what the Service specifically permits, prior written permission, or what applicable law allows.
  • TikTok does not allow content that infringes copyright, and enforces a repeat infringer policy that can end in an account ban.
  • Four cases put you in the clear: it is your own video, you have written permission, the video carries a Creative Commons licence, or your use qualifies as a copyright exception.
  • Crediting the creator, making no money, and finding the video "in public" are not permissions. None of the three covers you.

Table of contents

Use a YouTube video without permission, what the Terms of Service say

Start with the base, because it is simpler than most people assume. On its copyright help page, YouTube writes: "Think of copyright like the right to copy. Under copyright law, when someone creates original work, like a YouTube video, usually that means they automatically own the copyright to it." Nothing needs to be registered or claimed. The person who uploaded the video you are watching already holds the rights, whether they ever thought about it or not.

Second point, and this is the one people skip: the Terms of Service. They allow you to "watch or listen to Content for your personal, non-commercial use" and to "show YouTube videos through the embeddable YouTube player". Then comes the restriction, as written:

You are not allowed to: access, reproduce, download, distribute, transmit, broadcast, display, sell, license, alter, modify or otherwise use any part of the Service or any Content except: (a) as specifically permitted by the Service; (b) with prior written permission from YouTube and, if applicable, the respective rights holders; or (c) as permitted by applicable law.

Read the verbs. Download, alter, distribute, broadcast. That is exactly the sequence you run when you grab someone else's video, cut it up, and post the clip on your own account. And there is no fourth exception. There are three, and you have to land inside one of them.

Watching it at home, fine. Sharing it with the embed player, fine. Reposting it elsewhere under your name, not without permission.

What TikTok writes on its side

The second document is about the exit, not the entrance. Even if you get the file, TikTok decides what stays up on TikTok.

Its Intellectual Property Policy, released 27 March 2025 and effective 26 April 2025, is direct: "We do not allow any content that infringes copyright. The use of copyrighted content of others without proper authorization or legally valid reason may lead to a violation of TikTok's policies."

The same text acknowledges the nuance, and it is worth quoting rather than caricaturing: not all unauthorized uses constitute an infringement, because many countries have exceptions, including the fair use doctrine in the United States and permitted acts of fair dealing in the European Union.

It also spells out what happens when it becomes a habit. TikTok states that it has adopted and reasonably implemented an intellectual property repeat infringer policy under which it may ban the account of a user who repeatedly commits copyright infringement, and that it may ban an account immediately in cases of severe violations.

That is the real risk, and it is asymmetric. You can slip through twenty times. The twenty-first costs you an account you spent a year building.

The four cases where you are in the clear

Here are the four situations where using a video that is not yours holds up, in the order they actually show up in a creator's life.

1. The video is yours

The most common case, and by far the calmest one. Your own livestream, your own podcast, your own interview, your own long upload. You hold the rights, you cut whatever you want.

One detail that matters: if you filmed with someone, or if an editor, a camera operator or a musician contributed, you may not be the sole rights holder. In a professional setting the contract says so. Between friends, one written message is enough to avoid the awkward conversation later.

2. You have written permission

This is the clean route for everything else, and YouTube lists it explicitly among the options for safely using copyrighted content: getting permission to use someone else's content.

Written, not verbal. A message, an email, a reply on a thread. What matters is that you can find it again six months from now, when the clip is working and a claim lands.

3. The video carries a Creative Commons licence

YouTube lets creators publish under a Creative Commons licence, and lists using content "according to the terms of a Creative Commons license" among its safe options. It is permission granted in advance by the creator, on their terms.

Two reflexes before you build on it. Check the licence on the video itself, not on what some third party site claims about it. And respect the terms of that licence, attribution included when it is required. A licence is not a blank cheque, it is a contract with clauses.

The most quoted case, and the most misunderstood. YouTube lists fair use, fair dealing and the public domain among possible exceptions, and explains that in the United States, fair use legally permits the use of copyrighted content without the owner's permission for specific purposes, giving commentary, criticism, research, teaching and news reporting as common examples.

Three warnings, all from those same official pages. Rules differ by country or region, so what holds in the United States does not automatically hold where you are. None of these options guarantees you avoid trouble: YouTube says so directly, naming copyright strikes and Content ID claims. And if you are unsure, YouTube itself suggests getting legal advice before you upload.

In practice: an exception is something you defend, not something you declare. If your clip is a ten second excerpt inside a video you built around it and commented on, you are on defensible ground. If your clip is someone else's raw excerpt with your logo on top, you are not commenting, you are republishing.

The three cases where you only think you are

These are the three lines you hear most often. None of the three survives contact with the policies above.

5. "I credited the creator"

Credit is a courtesy, not a licence. Nowhere in the documents quoted above does naming the creator appear among the options for using their content. The rights holder, in YouTube's words, decides who else can use and distribute the content. Until they have decided, putting their handle in your caption changes nothing about your position.

6. "I am not making money from it"

Appealing, and wrong, and YouTube's Terms come close to saying so outright. Personal, non-commercial use is tied there to watching or listening to Content. It is never tied to downloading it, altering it, or redistributing it.

Being non-commercial can weigh in how a legal exception gets assessed, but it does not create permission on its own. And on an account you are building precisely so that it pays one day, the "it's free" argument gets thin fast anyway. If getting paid is the goal, the full map of revenue routes is in make money on TikTok.

7. "The video is public, so it is free to use"

The most expensive confusion of the three. Publicly available does not mean free of rights. YouTube notes that to be eligible for copyright protection a work needs to be creative and fixed in a physical medium, and that intangible things like ideas, facts and processes are not subject to copyright.

So what you can freely reuse is the information: what the person says, the facts they give, the argument they make. What you cannot reuse is their expression of it: their footage, their voice, their edit. That distinction opens a very useful door, and we come back to it at the end.

How to ask for permission, in practice

Plenty of creators never ask because they picture a heavy legal process. In reality it is a short message, and the yes rate surprises people, especially once the other side sees what they get out of it.

What the message needs, and nothing more:

  • Exactly what you want: which video, roughly which passage, roughly how long.
  • Where it will be published: your handle and the platforms.
  • What you offer back: visible credit, a link to the original, a mention of the channel in the caption.
  • One sentence that makes a no easy, with no negotiation attached.

Then, the moment a reply arrives, file it. A screenshot, one folder per person, the date. That is a two minute habit that pays for itself the day a clip takes off and someone disputes it.

One frequent edge case: the interview or podcast you took part in. You are on camera, but the recording usually belongs to whoever produced it. Ask the host, in writing. It is almost always a yes, because your clips promote their show too.

What viralmaker does, and what stays on you

Let us be direct, since this is the question you are holding while reading this on this particular site.

viralmaker takes a YouTube link, surfaces the best moments of the video, gives each clip a virality score, and returns vertical 9:16 clips cropped on whoever is speaking, with burned-in subtitles you can read without sound. There is no watermark on any plan, and the analysis and the scores are free. You do not need a YouTube channel of your own to use it.

What the tool does not do, and will never claim to do, is check rights on your behalf. Software that cuts a video has no idea whether you are allowed to use it, and no tool on the market does. What you publish stays your responsibility, exactly as it would with any editing software.

Which gives you the one rule worth taking from this whole article: a tool accepting any link does not mean you are allowed to publish the result. Those are two separate questions, and only the second one exposes you.

The good news is that legitimate raw material is not scarce once you look in the right place. Your own back catalogue first: your lives, your podcasts, your long uploads, your reruns. It is the richest seam you have, because it is already yours and it is sitting idle. The full method for mining it is in turn a YouTube video into shorts.

Then collaborations. A guest, a client, a creator friend: one written permission and their content becomes a legitimate source for your clips, with the upside shared.

Finally, the idea rather than the expression. If a video taught you something, that something is not protected. Redo it with your own face, your own voice and your own angle. It is more work than a copy and paste, it carries no risk, and it is the only version that builds your account instead of someone else's.

Paste a YouTube link and run the analysis on one of your own videos: the analysis and the scores are free, so you will see straight away which moments deserve a clip. You can also sign up on viralmaker directly. Plans and credits are laid out on the pricing page.

Frequently asked questions

Can I use a YouTube video without permission if I tag the channel? No. Credit appears nowhere in the options YouTube lists for safely using copyrighted content. Those options are a copyright exception, permission obtained from the owner, a Creative Commons licence, and for music the YouTube Audio Library or Creator Music.

What do I actually risk on TikTok? Content that infringes copyright is not allowed and may be removed. TikTok states it applies a repeat infringer policy that can lead to an account ban, and that it may ban an account immediately in cases of severe copyright violations.

What about videos advertised as royalty free on sharing sites? Always check the licence at the source, on the video itself. A claim made on a third party site does not bind the rights holder, and the rights holder is the one who decides who may use the content.

Can I clip an interview I appear in? You are on camera, but that does not make you the rights holder of the recording. The simplest route is to ask whoever produced it, in writing, and keep the reply.

Does a very short excerpt get a free pass? No, there is no duration below which everything is allowed. Length can matter in how a legal exception is assessed, but it does not create permission. And YouTube is explicit that none of the safe options guarantees you avoid a copyright strike or a Content ID claim.

Where to start

One sentence to close it: you can use a YouTube video without permission only when it is your own, when you hold written permission, when a Creative Commons licence covers it, or when your use qualifies as an exception you could defend. Credit, being free, and being public are not permissions.

Do three things this week. List your own long-form content from the past twelve months, because that is your legitimate stock and it is probably bigger than you think. Send a permission message to the two people you recorded something with. And check where you stand on the conditions for getting paid at all, which are mapped in TikTok monetization requirements.

The rest is a tooling question, and that is the easy part.

Public sources cited in this article: the YouTube Terms of Service, the copyright on YouTube help page, and the TikTok Intellectual Property Policy. This article explains what those documents say. It is not legal advice.