Terms of service

These terms of service govern the use of the ClipRails platform, reachable at cliprails.com, between the operator and registered users. The operator, and the users' contracting party, is:

These terms apply exclusively. Diverging or supplementary conditions of a user do not become part of the contract unless the operator expressly agrees to their application.

ClipRails is a platform for clipping campaigns. A Creator sets up a campaign and funds it with a budget; Clippers publish clips on their own social media accounts and are paid for the verified reach of those clips. ClipRails provides the technical infrastructure for this (campaign management, submission, reach verification, budget custody and payout). ClipRails is itself neither the commissioning party of the clips nor a party to the relationship between Creator and Clipper beyond the processing governed here.

Use requires an account. An account is either a Creator or a Clipper account; the account type is chosen at registration and is fixed thereafter. The user is responsible for the activity under their account and for keeping their credentials safe. Registration, building a community profile and creating draft campaigns are free of charge.

The Creator funds a campaign's budget upfront via Stripe Checkout. The budget paid in is held in escrow and is earmarked: it serves exclusively to pay the Clippers of that campaign. Amounts already committed by earned reach are no longer at the Creator's free disposal.

A campaign once funded runs to its end regardless of the Creator's standing with the platform — submission within the available budget, approvals, verification, payouts and settlement. A Clipper's claims depend on no circumstance on the Creator's side, and budget held in custody is not a means of pressure.

After a campaign is closed (settlement), the unspent budget is refunded to the Creator. The refund covers what remains after deducting all committed and paid-out amounts. An amount once earned through reach and owed to a Clipper is part of the completed settlement and not part of the refund (see § 7).

Each funding event carries a platform fee in addition to the budget. It amounts to 6% of the net target budget entered by the Creator (plus any statutory VAT) and is collected together with the budget through the same Stripe Checkout. The fee is shown as a separate line before payment; it does not reduce the campaign's budget, which is funded at the amount the Creator entered.

The platform fee shown at funding is a maximum. Where unspent budget is refunded under paragraph 2, the platform fee attributable to that budget is refunded pro rata to the same payment source. What the operator keeps is therefore the fee on the budget actually spent.

The platform fee is the operator's own remuneration and is not the payment provider's fee; the latter is shown separately in the checkout as payment processing. Neither is deducted from a Clipper's payout.

A Clipper submits a clip from a connected social account they own (TikTok, YouTube or Instagram). What a clip has to deliver is set by the Creator for each campaign (campaign requirements), in the campaign brief and, where the Creator attaches one, in a requirements document. The platform prescribes no requirements of its own; the platform rules under § 6 apply to every clip regardless. Once a campaign is funded, its requirements can no longer be changed. A clip is eligible for payment only if the Creator approves it against the requirements of that campaign; a rejected clip is never paid.

Payment is measured by verified reach (verified views) per 1,000 views at the campaign's rate. Views are verified after a holding period; the payout per submission is capped and is served exclusively out of the campaign budget held in escrow.

Payouts to Clippers run through Stripe Connect. They require an Express account of the Clipper; the identity and account verification needed for it (KYC onboarding) is carried out by Stripe under its own responsibility. As long as a Clipper has not completed the KYC onboarding, an earned amount cannot be transferred and is carried as a held payout (§ 7).

In addition to the campaign requirements of the Creator (§ 5), the following platform rules apply to every Clipper. They are conditions of using this platform: they hold for every campaign alike, they cannot be waived by any Creator, and they are not part of the campaign requirements that freeze at funding.

Advertising disclosure. Every clip published under a campaign is to be made recognisable as a paid collaboration. What is owed is the fact of the disclosure, not its form: whether it happens through a hashtag, an overlay in the video or the disclosure feature of the social network in question follows from the Creator's requirements and, where they say nothing about it, is the Clipper's own choice. The platform prescribes no form. Statutory disclosure duties that go further, and the rules of the social network the clip is published on, remain unaffected.

No paid reach. The reach of a submitted clip has to be organic. Bought distribution behind a clip submitted under a campaign is prohibited, in particular:

• advertisements (Ads) on the clip or on the account carrying it,
• Boosts and other paid promotion features of the social network,
• Whitelisting (Spark Ads and comparable features), that is, releasing the clip to be advertised by a third party.

The Creator pays for the reach a clip earns on its own. A violation of a platform rule is a ground for the Creator to reject the clip; a rejected submission is never paid (§ 5).

The platform cannot technically verify compliance with these rules and does not claim to. It runs no check of its own for them; a violation is caught in the Creator's review of the clip, or not at all.

A held payout arises when a Clipper has earned a payment but cannot (yet) be paid out through Stripe Connect. A held payout stays claimable indefinitely: the Clipper claims it at any time by completing the payout onboarding.

A held payout does not lapse in favour of the Creator or the platform. It belongs to the Clipper; the Creator has already received the verified reach and paid for it out of the committed budget. A payout that is never claimed therefore never flows back to the Creator and is not booked as revenue by the platform. Should a payout remain permanently unclaimed, its further treatment follows the applicable law on unclaimed funds (surrender to the competent authority rather than retention).

During the beta phase the operator limits the size of each individual funding event by a funding cap — an operator-side ceiling on the net target amount a Creator asks for per funding. The cap applies equally to initial funding and top-ups. If the requested target amount exceeds the cap, the funding is refused without any payment being triggered, and the Creator is shown the highest amount currently permitted.

The funding cap is the operator's risk limit during the beta and may change or fall away. It does not affect the size of budgets already funded.

The user undertakes not to submit clips they did not publish themselves, not to inflate reach by artificial or fraudulent means, to connect only their own social accounts, and not to misuse the platform in any other way. They observe the terms of the connected platform — for a connected YouTube channel, the YouTube terms of service in particular, since ClipRails reads that channel through YouTube API Services, and for a connected Instagram account the Instagram terms of use, which ClipRails reads through the Instagram API. Submissions suspected of fraud may be suspended; confirmed fraud may be rejected without payment.

The platform is provided without any assurance of a particular reach, a particular income or uninterrupted availability. The operator is liable without limitation for intent and gross negligence, as well as for damage arising from injury to life, body or health. In cases of simple negligence the operator is liable only for the breach of essential contractual obligations (cardinal obligations), and then limited in amount to the foreseeable damage typical of this type of contract. Liability is otherwise excluded. Mandatory statutory provisions, in particular under the German Product Liability Act, remain unaffected.

The user relationship has no minimum term and no notice period, because there is no recurring charge: what a Creator pays, they pay per funding under § 4. A user can end their account at any time. A campaign already funded is settled regardless of that, under § 4 — a Clipper's earned claim is unaffected by the Creator leaving. The right of either side to terminate for cause remains unaffected.

The operator may change these terms with effect for the future if the offering, the service providers used or the legal situation change. The version published here is the one that applies; the date under “Last updated” at the top shows the most recent change. Material changes are communicated to users in a suitable form.

The law of the Federal Republic of Germany applies, excluding the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods. If the user is a merchant, a legal entity under public law or a special fund under public law, the place of jurisdiction is: Berlin. Should a provision of these terms be invalid, the validity of the remaining provisions remains unaffected.

Please direct questions about these terms to contact@cliprails.com.