The words these documents keep using

Permissions documents run on a small vocabulary, and most of it is doing more work than it looks. These pages say what each phrase decides, what it is routinely read as deciding, and which sentence has to be read beside it. No vendor is quoted here. As of 2026-09-22.

1Why the vocabulary earns its own section

A grid of quoted clauses is only useful to somebody who can read a clause. Half the phrases in these documents look like plain English and are not: royalty-free says nothing about who owns anything, non-exclusive is about the vendor rather than about you, and a licence back is compatible with a disclaimer of ownership on the same page.

Keeping the vocabulary separate also keeps the register honest. When a vendor page has to explain a phrase before it can record a reading, the explanation drifts into the entry and the entry stops being quotable. Here the explanation has somewhere to live.

Nothing on these pages is attributed to anybody. Where a phrase is used by only one vendor in only one clause, it belongs on that vendor's page instead, because a definition built from a single instance is a description of that instance.

2How to use them beside the grid

Read the cell first and the word second. The register records what a document says; these pages say what the sentence is capable of settling, which is usually narrower than a reader hopes and occasionally wider.

Each page ends by naming the sentence to look for next to the one you just read. That pairing is the part nobody supplies: a grant with no plan definition beside it, or a disclaimer with no licence-back clause beside it, is half a position.

3Met while reading commercial use from

• Commercial use — What commercial use decides in a permissions document, the three different questions readers ask it to answer, and which one it actually settles.
• Licence grant — A licence grant is a sentence plus its qualifiers: scope, duration, territory and conditions, any of which can remove most of what it gives.
• Worldwide — Why worldwide in a grant is not always worldwide, how a defined territory works, and what a carve-out of named jurisdictions does to a reader.
• Acceptable use — Why the list of forbidden categories sits in a separate document, which categories recur across vendors, and how it narrows a grant nobody reread.
• Terms of service — Why a sentence on a plan page and a clause in the terms carry different weight, and what to do when the two describe the same permission differently.
• Seat — What per-seat pricing does to a licence question, why the account that exported a file matters, and what happens when a seat changes hands.
• Community licence — Why a community licence looks like open source and behaves like a bespoke contract, and which parts of it have to be read fresh every time.
• Permissive licence — Why a named permissive licence answers a commercial-use question in three words, and which light obligations it nonetheless brings with it.
• Monthly active users — What a monthly active user threshold does in a model licence, why it is measured by the licensee, and which products are near it without realising.
• Revenue threshold — Why a revenue cap in a licence is harder to answer than it looks, what termination means when it is crossed, and what a good year does to a grant.
• Territory — Why a territorial condition is about where the licensee is rather than where the audience is, and what that means for a company with several offices.
• Carve-out — How an exception narrows a grant without amending it, the places carve-outs are normally filed, and why reading a document backwards finds them.
• Indemnity — What an indemnity would add to a commercial-use grant, why suppliers avoid giving one for generated output, and what stands in for it.
• As is — Why an as-is disclaimer sits next to almost every permission in this subject, what it excludes, and why it is not a reason to distrust the grant.
• Termination — What terminating a licence stops, what it does not unmake, and why almost no document in this subject says what happens to earlier output.
• Suspension — Why an account suspension clause is a sharper risk than a licence limit for a production in flight, and why so few documents attach a consequence at all.
• Provenance — What a statement about training material asserts, which worry it answers, and why it is not a substitute for a permission or an indemnity.
• Enterprise licence — What negotiated terms typically add that a public page cannot, and why the absence of something publicly does not mean it is unavailable.
• Reading date — Why a permissions record without a date is worthless, what a date does not promise, and how to tell whether a cell needs looking at again.

4Met while reading free tier

• Personal use — Why personal use is wider than most readers assume, what it typically excludes, and why the definition matters more than the phrase.
• Watermark — Why a visible mark on an export is a constraint on publishing rather than on permission, and why the two get conflated on free tiers.
• Plan card — How a comparison table becomes evidence about permissions, when an absent line supports a reading, and why it never becomes a quotable rule.

5Met while reading what is owned

• Output ownership — Why a vendor can decline a claim to your output but cannot grant you ownership of it, and what the difference means for a production.
• Publishing rights — Publishing rights answer whether a file may go out, and stop there.
• Royalty-free — Royalty-free means no recurring fee per use.
• Licence back — Why a document can decline to own your output and still take a broad licence over it, what that licence is usually for, and when the breadth matters.
• Non-exclusive — Non-exclusive in a grant means other customers get the same permission.
• Perpetual — What perpetual and irrevocable do to a clause, why they matter most in a licence back, and what a cancelled subscription leaves behind.
• Sublicensable — Why sublicensable is the qualifier agency work turns on, what it means in a grant and in a licence back, and what its absence implies.
• Derivative work — What derivative works covers in a permissions document, why it appears in grants and in licences back, and what it means for an edited clip.
• Assignment — The difference between assigning rights and licensing them, why agency contracts ask for the first, and what to do when only the second is available.
• Attribution — When crediting a supplier is optional and when it is a condition the grant depends on, and where the obligation usually appears in this subject.
• Public generation — Why visibility inside a product is a commercial term rather than a privacy setting, and what it costs a campaign built on a distinctive look.
• Stock library — Why a product containing licensed material can promise less about a finished export, and what to check about what travels with the file.
• No statement published — Why a register records silence in those words, what the phrase deliberately does not claim, and when a silence is worth a page of its own.

6Met while reading input restriction

• Inputs and outputs — Why permissions documents treat what goes in and what comes out as separate questions, and why the input side carries most of the real exposure.
• Consent — What free, informed consent asks for when a real person's voice or likeness is used, why scope matters more than signature, and who keeps the record.
• Likeness — Why a person's appearance raises a different claim from copyright in an image, and why clearing the photograph does not clear the face in it.
• Stock avatar — Why a presenter supplied by a vendor can carry limits no subscription lifts, and why those limits belong to the person who was filmed.
• Custom avatar — Why building a presenter from a real person removes a supplier's restriction and installs a longer obligation to that person instead.
• Training data — Why training material raises one question about what a model learned from and another about whether your own uploads are used, and why they get confused.
• Opt-out — Why an opt-out applies forward rather than backward, what a product setting can and cannot undo, and why the date of the switch matters.

Also on the grid: Products, Fields, Records, Pairs, Questions, Learn, Data. What makes a clause quotable is set out on the reading page.

7What the output is for

Alongside the terms behind “Words”, SceneMixer's guides describe the work itself this way:

Under the terms, what you generate is yours to the extent the law allows, royalty-free, commercial use included.

SceneMixer, What You Get to Keep (read 2026-10-13)

The script is written from the photos and the one-line description. In step-by-step mode you can rewrite it before anything is shot.

SceneMixer, How to Make an Ad from One Photo — “Do I need a script?” (read 2026-10-13)