Pinterest has a remarkable story. They’ve grown faster than even they could have hoped and now have millions of users “pinning” their favorite things from the web onto the users’ boards.
Of course, some brands love the grassroots advertising this provides, and many content providers appreciate the exposure. In many cases Pinterest and other social media sites are driving more traffic to sites than search engines. That is all well and good until someone doesn’t want their content copied and pinned.
Enter Pinterest and its response to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA can make ISPs and online publishers liable for copyright infringement by their users, unless they take certain actions to fall within the safe harbor provisions. Pinterest does this and even blogged about it this week.
I think Pinterest’s strategy of providing code for a meta tag that will prevent pinning of content from a page having that tag (an opt-out) is a bit short sighted. But what I really found interesting were the comments from the content providers.
Now excuse me while I go find a plugin for WordPress so this post can be pinned.
And in case someone wonders, the Pinterest logo I used in this post is made available for download on their site.
I checked last fall and prttey much every single one of my popular knitted items and cakes is on Pinterest. I have no account, have never been asked permission, and most of the pins do not give credit.But I don’t have time to chase down every such use of my images. And for those who do give credit, it’s free word-of-mouth for me. Not that I’m selling much at the moment to capitalize on that, but meh, whatever.But I was unaware that now anyone is licensed to use my images because someone else pinned them. I have a HUGE problem with that and yes, if someone used one of my images for sale elsewhere, I’d be contacting a lawyer, especially if the use was inappropriate or offensive. I wouldn’t blame the user: I’d blame Pinterest.So I don’t care that users are pinning, especially with credit, but I care big time that this ToS lets anything pinned get used.
Absolutely I agree that you should pin sotiehmng that you are proud of and think will be beneficial to others. The blogger you highlighted however has a 3 step process (useful posts, posts with pretty pictures & other things you find interesting on your own blog) for promoting your own blog content. That is blatent self-promotion.I have no issue with others pinning articles that they find useful (I’ve done that with an Eli|Rose article myself to remember & find easily later) but when you are pinning your own things over and over as this blogger stated to do, it is the annoying self promotion that Pinterest wants to avoid.
I started just like you….jumped on the badwnagon because all the “cool girls” were doing it…LOL. Then I finally “pinned” a couple of months later. It’s my go to when I’m bored, needing a break, wanted inspiration, etc. I think it’s awesome. I’ll check you out on Pinterest. :L)