Lots of get-rich-quick dropshipping gurus on YouTube and TikTok have similar advice: To sell a product, you need good video ads. And if you want good raw video content to make into good video ads, you can just find what you need on social media. Countless tutorials show dropshippers scraping product review videos posted by customers. These customers bought the item from someone else, posted their experience on some social media site, and never gave consent for dropshippers to use their content. It may be common, but it’s still unethical.
And it’s also happening to creators.
Actually, it’s been happening to creators. Six years ago, HopeScope posted a video razzing the brands who’d stolen her content to promote their activewear. Back then, this phenomenon was less common, because brands had to scrub through long-form videos and do some editing to steal creators’ content for their own purposes.
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But with the rise of short-form, short-form editing tools, and the ever-growing ecommerce deluge on TikTok, the internet has found itself in a place with more product-centric content that’s easier than ever for brands to repurpose for their own uses.
Does that make it legal?
Not necessarily.
What can creators do?
The Daily Dot investigated the growing number of brands using creators’ short-form content in their marketing, speaking to Kylen Chen-Troester and Anna Konstantopoulous, two creators whose videos were (allegedly) snatched by skincare brand Soft Services and self-care brand TheraBox, respectively.
Both brands used the creators’ content in ads without permission, and both creators were able to get the ads taken down—but that didn’t change that the brands had used them as representatives.
“It’s because they technically did give me credit for my video, I think they thought that that was fine,” Konstantopoulous (whose video didn’t even involve TheraBox’s products) told the Daily Dot. “But again, I don’t even know that brand. I’ve never partnered with them before. I’ve never used any of their products. And so it felt like I was endorsing a product that I’ve never used before.”
Chen-Troester was ultimately forgiving: “When it’s a small brand and there’s just kind of one person behind it and the situation was clearly an accident or a misunderstanding, I think there should be a level of grace that should be extended,” she said. “But when it comes to large corporations that are constantly ripping people off, stealing IP, and just don’t really have a moral compass. I absolutely think that creators should be going after them and demand monetary compensation.”
Could creators get compensated? Konstantopoulous’s comment about how she felt like she was “endorsing a product that I’ve never used” could be the ticket there.
University of Minnesota associate professor Christopher Terry told the Daily Dot that if a brand misuses a creator’s identity, it can be legally liable.
“For example, if someone were to use a Kardashian’s content in order to promote their products without their permission, it can be legally disputed because their identity as a popular celebrity is being misused,” he said.
99.999% of creators don’t rise to the same level of public celebrity as the Kardashians, but their content still belongs to them, and many have established their own personal brand identities. If they have 5,000 or 10,000 or a million followers, they might be able to demonstrate that their followers would’ve falsely thought the brand’s video was them endorsing a product.
As the Daily Dot points out, copyright law is still murky when it comes to creators’ content. That doesn’t mean, however, that if creators see their videos stolen by brands, they have no avenues to pursue for recompense. They can reach out directly to brands. YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and other platforms also allow people to report ads. And, in the case of Chen-Troester and Konstantopoulous, sometimes a callout video is all you need:
@kylenct stealing from creators is lame :/ @Soft Services ♬ original sound – Kylen
