Legal options for creators if TikTok goes away

With the impending ban of TikTok just days away, the future for creators is at a critical juncture. Here’s what to do next.

TikTok ban and legal challenge

In April 2024, President Joe Biden signed the “Protecting Americans from Applications Controlled by Foreign Adversaries Act”, known as the “TikTok ban”. In short, the law prohibits TikTok and other apps owned by its China-based parent company, Byte Dance Ltd., from operating in the United States unless Byte Dance divests its interests in TikTok by January 19, 2025.

Last year, TikTok, Byte Dance and several creators filed a petition in the U.S. District Court of Appeals in Washington, DC, challenging the validity of this law on several grounds, including that it violates TikTok’s First Amendment rights and 170 his million Americans. users. The government defended the ban’s validity, citing national security concerns. The DC Circuit Court ruled in favor of the ban on December 6, 2024. You can read that decision here.

TikTok filed a petition with the Supreme Court to review the District Court’s decision and halt the ban ahead of the looming January 19 deadline. On December 18, 2024, the Supreme Court declined to stay the ban, but decided to hear the case on an accelerated timeline. Petitions, documents and other Supreme Court files are here.

On January 10, 2025, lawyers for TikTok, TikTok’s creators and the US government argued before a nine-judge panel of the Supreme Court, which you can hear the arguments (or read the transcript) here.

Now that the parties have presented their cases, the Supreme Court will decide the fate of TikTok.

Access to the TikTok app after the January 19 deadline

If the ban goes into effect, our access to and use of the TikTok app will be on borrowed time. Following the D.C. Circuit Court’s ruling, around December 16, 2024, Google parent Alphabet and Apple received a letter from lawmakers instructing them to prepare for the January 19 deadline. According to the law, the TikTok ban prohibits app stores and web hosting services from hosting or distributing TikTok from January 19, 2025. In effect, the ban prevents new users from downloading the app and prevents access to the TikTok website via desktop. Existing TikTok users will continue to have access to the app. They will no longer have access to future updates or access them on their desktops. Without updates, the TikTok app will eventually become useless to creators. In its court filings and during oral arguments before the Supreme Court, TikTok stated that the app would “go dark” if the Court upholds the ban.

How to download your TikTok account data

TikTok allows its users to retrieve their account details by submitting a request through TikTok. Once TikTok provides users with their data, they have to engage in the more tedious activity of copying and pasting, navigating through a dense RTF file to drag and drop their posts one by one without the TikTok watermark. And do the same exercise again for any content they might be looking for, such as likes, comments, messages or saved videos. I found this creator’s video showing people how to do this helpful. However, other creators have mentioned automation tools or apps that help users download their content for them, such as Faves.

Your Rights in Your TikTok Content

Although creators can download their data, their rights to their content are not as clear as they may believe. Copyright law protects original works of authorship fixed in a tangible medium such as a video or photo. However, this is limited to the original works of the creators – not external elements that they can include in their content.

Content and copyright law considerations no longer occur in a vacuum. Creators incorporate music, drive viral trends by using popular sounds, and use other native TikTok features to create engaging content.

As owners, copyright law protects the right of creators to control where their content is published and to license their content to third parties (among other things). TikTok’s terms and policies acknowledge that creators own their original content, but grant TikTok and its user base a number of permissions (a license), including the right to access, edit and share their content on third-party platforms the third. Although TikTok’s Terms provide a lot of flexibility around the use of user content, it does not grant any licensing rights to the catalogs of music or sounds available on the app, which is a critical component of most creators’ content.

In addition to copyright risks, creators must also consider the terms of other platforms. Meta, for example, prohibits users from sharing non-original or infringing content. While there is a lot of overlap with other social platforms in music, popular sounds (give or take a few days after it goes viral on TikTok) and content, content creators need to be aware of the limitations in the case of a gap. Ultimately, it is up to the original owners of a viral sound, music or video to enforce their rights.

Where are you driving your audience?

No lemon 8.

Some of the most significant consequences of this ban is the loss of the platform and communities they worked so hard to build on TikTok. While creators come to terms with the reality of this ban, it is essential to protect as much of their audience as possible. Some creators have already taken steps by directing them to alternative apps, but not the right ones.

Although the law has been dubbed “banning TikTok,” don’t let the label fool you. The Act to protect Americans from applications controlled by foreign adversaries affects all social applications owned by Byte Dance Ltd., including Lemon8. So Lemon8 will likely suffer a similar fate under this ban.

Some creators (myself included) are targeting their audience on Instagram or YouTube. There has also been some talk about other TikTok alternatives like Neptune and FanBase.

Another consideration: TikTok brand partnerships

Creators in the midst of a TikTok-specific partnership should review their agreements and reach out to their contacts to discuss a way forward. This looming deadline could impact a creator’s ability to fulfill their contractual obligations if they are specifically required to create and publish content on TikTok and a brand’s ability to amplify it through paid media efforts. Some contracts may not be affected by this pivot. Still, it’s worth exploring and moving forward before the January 19 deadline.