When you publish anything on Medium, you give Medium the legal right to use, copy, share, sell, translate, and create new works based on your content worldwide, without paying you.
This analysis describes what Medium's agreement states, permits, or reserves. It does not constitute a legal determination about enforceability. Regulatory applicability and practical outcomes may vary by jurisdiction, enforcement context, and individual circumstances. Read our methodology
This license is very broad — Medium can sublicense your content to third parties, create derivative works, and potentially use it in ways you did not intend, including in AI training or commercial partnerships, without your additional consent.
Every piece of content you publish on Medium — articles, stories, responses — is subject to a sweeping royalty-free worldwide license that allows Medium and its sublicensees to reproduce, distribute, and create derivative works from your writing without additional compensation or approval.
How other platforms handle this
When you provide Content (as defined in the Steam Subscriber Agreement) to Steam, you grant Valve a worldwide, royalty-free, sublicensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display such Content... Valve is not responsi...
You retain ownership of the content you share, post, send, or receive through our Services. In order to operate and provide our Services, you grant WhatsApp a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, create derivative works of, di...
You grant to the Redfin Companies a worldwide, non-exclusive, transferable, sublicensable, fully paid-up, royalty-free license to use, reproduce, modify (for formatting purposes only), distribute, and perform and display publicly Your Content (excluding Feedback) in connection with provision of the ...
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"By posting content to Medium, you give us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, transferable license to use the content, with the right to sublicense, reproduce, distribute, display, publish, perform, make, have made, sell, translate, and create derivative works of your content in connection with Medium's Services, including our owned and operated publications.— Excerpt from Medium's Medium Terms of Service
REGULATORY FRAMEWORK: This provision implicates U.S. copyright law (17 U.S.C. §106) — users retain ownership but grant broad exploitation rights. Under GDPR Art. 17 and the right to erasure, EU users may request deletion of personal data embedded in content, but the content license may survive deletion requests if content has been sublicensed. The EU AI Act (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689) and related copyright debates around AI training data create emerging regulatory risk if Medium uses licensed content for AI model training without explicit disclosure. FTC Act Section 5 applies if the license scope is materially broader than users reasonably expect based on platform disclosures.
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This license is very broad — Medium can sublicense your content to third parties, create derivative works, and potentially use it in ways you did not intend, including in AI training or commercial partnerships, without your additional consent.
Every piece of content you publish on Medium — articles, stories, responses — is subject to a sweeping royalty-free worldwide license that allows Medium and its sublicensees to reproduce, distribute, and create derivative works from your writing without additional compensation or approval.
ConductAtlas has identified this type of provision across 16 platforms. See the full comparison.
No. ConductAtlas is an independent monitoring service. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Medium.