Who Really Owns Your Art?

Ownership and autonomy in the age of software and the public domain

Author

Alexa Phillips
August 20, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes

Welcome to Creatives Anonymous, a weekly newsletter that explores creativity, culture, and the trends shaping how we work, think, and make through essays, interviews, and commentary.

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Like millions of people, I tuned into Taylor Swift’s interview on the New Heights podcast last week (10/10 recommend—it’s two hours but well worth the listen). 

On the podcast, she goes into detail on how she got her master recordings back, and there were two things she said that really struck me: 

  • If she hadn’t bought them back, they would have ended up in someone’s will 

  • Not every artist cares about owning their masters or how they are distributed 

It got me thinking about the essay for this week’s newsletter: Who really owns your art?

At first, we think the answer is simple: We produced it, so therefore, we own it. 

But it’s not that simple when you have software that facilitates the creation of said art. The Substacks, Beehiivs, Canvas, CapCuts of the world. In other words, the tools that make it possible to create that final product. 

The initial idea might be ours, but we have assistance in bringing it to market. So, in a way, our final creative product is no different than a master recording. 

Some tools, like CapCut, have updated its terms of service to grant the platform rights to use user-uploaded content. While the user might retain ownership of their content, the platform can decide how to use, modify, adapt, and distribute it, including for commercial purposes (I don’t even want to know what Substack has hidden in its terms of service). 

Moreover, the platforms that we use to distribute our work, especially if we choose to publish online, have rules we must abide by. These platforms have the power to censor us (in a good or bad way) or control how and when we can publish. This leaves us ultimately catering to them and complying with their rules instead of creating the art. 

It becomes a necessary evil because if we want our work to get published, we have to comply with the platforms to make it happen, even if it means inadvertently sharing our data and IP and giving up control of what happens to the work once we hit publish.

And it’s not even just the software. There’s so much creative work that belongs to the public domain. When work is in the public domain, it no longer solely belongs to the artist, but to the public—the artist might get credit for the original idea, but anyone can freely use the work. 

The best recent example of this is original audio in short-form content. Rarely is the original creator tagged or credited. The creator’s IP is free for all to use, so much so that it’s hard to trace original audio or trends to the creators who started them. 

As a creative, it diminishes the value of the work if anyone can access and use it, especially without giving credit where credit is due. And sure, we may not care because we go viral, but when someone else is credited with starting a trend or originating an idea, that’s when it gets dicey. 

When there is no clear ownership over our creative work, our IP becomes up for grabs, where anyone can claim the idea was theirs. The idea that we once thought was ours now belongs to the world. 

It’s a harrowing thought to think that we don’t own 100% of our work—the platforms we use to create own a part of it, as does the world. 

Some (most of us likely) don’t care about what happens to our work. In fact, we’d be thrilled if we sold it or got viral from it. But what does it say about us if we are so willing to give up our autonomy to the platforms and people who can alter the original ideas that inspired the work in the first place?

Creative Corner

  • 🎞️ What I’m Consuming: Fit for TV: The Reality of the Biggest Loser.

  • 💡 What I’m Loving: The idea of doing a “slow read.” I started doing that with The Creative Act, and I'm going to embark on a slow read of War and Peace.

  • 🎨 What I’m Working On: I’ve been influenced by the “personal curriculum” trend on TikTok, so I’m thinking about what I want mine to look like for fall (more on that in next week’s newsletter).

  • 💭 Weekly Musing:

“Finding yourself” is not really how it works. You aren’t a ten-dollar bill in last winter’s coat pocket. You are also not lost. Your true self is right there, buried under cultural conditioning, other people’s opinions, and inaccurate conclusions you drew as a kid that became your beliefs about who you are. “Finding yourself” is actually returning to yourself. An unlearning, an excavation, a remembering who you were before the world got its hands on you.

Emily McDowell

Thank you 💕

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I’m so grateful for all of your support!

Alexa Phillips is a writer, content strategist, and multi-passionate creative. She is the founder of Bright Eyes Creative, a Seattle-based consultancy and media company that helps founder-led consumer brands and creatives close the gap between vision and value.

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