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.

Of age; Creators as businesses. Natural persons must be at least 18 years old and have full legal capacity to use the platform. A Creator uses it exclusively as a business (Unternehmer) within the meaning of § 14 of the German Civil Code (BGB), that is, in the exercise of their commercial or independent professional activity — when promoting their own channel, for instance; Creator accounts are not available to consumers within the meaning of § 13 BGB. A Clipper may also use the platform as a consumer; the statutory right of withdrawal then applies (annex to these terms). The user confirms at registration what applies to them, and the operator may rely on that confirmation. The operator may block an account that rests on an untrue confirmation and terminate the contract.

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 views 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. At registration the user confirms that they meet the requirements of § 1 and accepts these terms; the contract is concluded when the account is created. There is no entitlement to registration. These terms can be retrieved at any time at cliprails.com/terms; the operator keeps the version that applied at registration. The contract languages are German and English, and the German version is binding.

The Creator funds a campaign's budget upfront via Stripe Checkout. The budget paid in is held on the operator's account with the payment service provider Stripe and is earmarked (escrow): it serves exclusively to pay the Clippers of that campaign. “Escrow” here means that earmarking; no separate trust account is kept. 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 8% of the net target budget entered by the Creator 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. As a small business under § 19 of the German VAT Act (UStG), the operator charges no VAT on it.

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 of the two is deducted from a Clipper's payout; the payout fee under § 5 is a separate charge and is not part of the Creator's budget.

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.

Running time and end date. A Creator may give a campaign an end date. It holds until the end of the chosen calendar day in the Creator's time zone; what is binding is the moment the campaign shows to Clippers, together with its time zone. Until that moment the campaign accepts submissions; what counts is when the submission reaches the platform. Clips submitted in time are still reviewed after the end and paid under this § if approved. Once a campaign is funded, the Creator can only move its end date later or remove it, never bring it forward. A campaign without an end date runs until the Creator closes it. When a campaign is closed by the Creator, or by the operator under § 11, it accepts no further submissions, and clips not yet approved are rejected without payment; this also applies to a campaign whose end date has passed. Clips already approved continue to be verified and paid until the end of their holding period. A funded campaign that never went live ends at its end date as well; its budget is refunded under § 4.

Payment is measured by 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 earmarked campaign budget.

The operator withholds a payout fee from every payout to a Clipper. It amounts to 6% of the amount earned at the end of the holding period, is calculated and withheld when that period is settled, and the remainder is what is transferred to the Clipper. The Clipper's account statement shows, per payout, the amount earned, the fee withheld and the amount transferred.

Payouts to Clippers run through Stripe Connect. They require a payout account of the Clipper with Stripe; 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).

The amount transferred to that account is paid out from there to the bank account the Clipper has registered with Stripe (bank payout). It runs automatically and without any action by the Clipper: as soon as the balance of the account reaches a threshold amount set by the operator, and at the latest 80 days after the preceding bank payout — or, where there has been none, after the funds arrived. Each bank payout carries the account's entire available balance. No separate fee is charged to the Clipper for the bank payout.

A Clipper acts independently; no employment relationship arises with the operator or with the Creator. The Clipper is responsible for the tax treatment of their payments. Where the operator is required by law to report details of Clippers and their payments to tax authorities — in particular under the German Platform Tax Transparency Act (PStTG) — the Clipper provides the details needed for it on request; until then a payout may be held back.

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 views and paid for them 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).

Chargebacks: If the funding of a campaign is disputed, that campaign is frozen: new submissions, payouts and refunds are paused while the dispute is open. The platform attempts to reverse payouts already transferred to payout accounts. If the dispute is won, recovered payouts are transferred again; a failed transfer remains owed. If the dispute is lost, the disputed amount is deducted from the campaign budget, recovered and other unpaid payouts are cancelled, and open submissions end without a payout. This is the exception to the rule above: the funding has been taken back, so these amounts are no longer owed. Payouts that could not be reversed stay with the Clipper; the platform bears that loss and does not charge it to the Clipper. A Creator with a lost chargeback can no longer fund campaigns, including new campaigns and top-ups. Other campaigns are not frozen by this dispute.

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 user only posts content (pictures, texts, announcements, requirements documents, clips) that they are entitled to use and that does not break the law — in particular copyright, trade mark, personality or youth protection law. The user indemnifies the operator against third-party claims arising from a breach of these duties for which the user is responsible, including reasonable costs of legal defence.

The user keeps all rights in their content. They grant the operator the simple, royalty-free right, unlimited in territory, to make the content they post on the platform (profile and Community pictures, descriptions, announcements, campaign briefings and requirements documents) publicly available on the platform for the duration of use and to process it technically for that purpose (to scale it, for instance); for content that is part of the accounting, also beyond that, to the extent necessary for settlement and for keeping records.

By submitting a clip, the Clipper allows the operator to show the clip — already published on their social account — on the platform together with a preview image, username, profile picture and verified views, and to embed it through the player of the platform concerned; once it is approved, also on the public Community page and in the leaderboard.

Source material. By funding a campaign, the Creator grants every Clipper of their Community the simple, royalty-free right to edit and shorten the source material named in the campaign into clips and to publish those clips on the Clipper's own social accounts, within the campaign requirements. For clips published while the campaign runs — that is, while it accepts submissions (§ 5) — this right continues without time limit. The Creator warrants that they hold the rights needed for it, including rights in third-party contributions within the source material (music or guests, for instance). For good cause the Creator may ask for individual clips to be taken down; payment already earned is unaffected.

Anyone can report illegal content on ClipRails — on a Community page, in an announcement or in a campaign briefing, for instance — electronically to contact@cliprails.com. A report should contain: an explanation of why the content is illegal, the exact address (URL) of the content, the name and email address of the person reporting (except for reports concerning depictions of child sexual abuse), and a statement that the details are accurate and complete to the best of their knowledge. The operator confirms receipt, examines the report promptly, diligently and objectively, and communicates the outcome.

Where content or conduct of a user breaks the law or these terms, the operator may — taking account of the circumstances and the interests of those involved — remove content or make it invisible, suspend a Community, suspend or reject submissions, hold back payouts on suspicion of fraud, or block an account. Payments already earned without fraud remain owed. These decisions are taken by a person; no automated procedures are used for moderation. A Creator's rejection of a clip under § 5 is the Creator's decision, not a moderation decision of the operator.

The operator informs the affected user of such a measure with a clear and specific statement of reasons (Art. 17 of the Digital Services Act), as a rule by email, unless the law prohibits it. The user can lodge a complaint against the decision within six months at contact@cliprails.com; a person then reviews it again. Recourse to the courts remains unaffected.

Single point of contact for authorities, the European Commission and users under Art. 11 and 12 of the Digital Services Act: contact@cliprails.com, in German or English.

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 terminate the relationship with four weeks' notice in text form; campaigns already funded are then completed under § 4.

The operator may change these terms with effect for the future if the offering, the service providers used or the legal situation change. Changes are communicated to users in text form (by email or in the app, for instance) at least four weeks before they take effect. If a business does not object before they take effect, the amended terms are deemed accepted; the notice points out this consequence and the right to object separately. A Clipper who is a consumer is asked to agree to the changes; silence is not agreement. If the user objects or does not agree, either side may terminate the relationship as of the date the changes take effect. For campaigns already funded, the fees and campaign requirements agreed at funding continue to apply. The version published here is the one that applies; the date under “Last updated” at the top shows the most recent change.

The law of the Federal Republic of Germany applies, excluding the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods; towards consumers only insofar as this does not deprive them of the protection of mandatory provisions of the country of their habitual residence. If the user is a merchant, a legal entity under public law or a special fund under public law, or if they have no general place of jurisdiction in Germany, 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.

Right of withdrawal. You have the right to withdraw from this contract within fourteen days without giving any reason. The withdrawal period is fourteen days from the day the contract is concluded (registration of your Clipper account). To exercise the right of withdrawal, you must inform us (Antonio Herbin, Händelstraße 12, 12623 Berlin, Germany, email: contact@cliprails.com) of your decision to withdraw from this contract by an unequivocal statement (e.g. a letter sent by post or an email). You may use the model withdrawal form below, but it is not obligatory. To meet the withdrawal deadline, it is sufficient for you to send your communication concerning your exercise of the right of withdrawal before the withdrawal period has expired.

Effects of withdrawal. If you withdraw from this contract, we shall reimburse to you all payments received from you — for a Clipper, the payout fees withheld under § 5 — without undue delay and in any event not later than fourteen days from the day on which we are informed about your decision to withdraw from this contract. We will carry out such reimbursement using the same means of payment as you used for the initial transaction, unless expressly agreed otherwise; in any event, you will not incur any fees as a result of such reimbursement. Payouts you have already earned remain yours.

Model withdrawal form. (If you want to withdraw from the contract, please fill in this form and send it back.)

(*) Delete as appropriate.