Pinterest Copyright Violations??

I found this article Is Pinterest a Haven for Copyright Violations? written by someone called Greekgeek, on a web site called HubPages. This article talks about how when someone “pins” a photo or piece of artwork, it could possibly be a copyright infringement. Described in this article, “Copyright is the legal right of artists, authors, and photographers to decide how their own work is copied. (They may sell this right, and thus profit from their work.).” So just supplying a link to the photo, or artwork is not good enough. In this article, it also gives a link to a story where a company got sued for using a copyrighted photo on their web site and even took it down after they were asked to do so, but still had to pay for their mistake.

Also discussed is Pinterest’s stand on copyrighted images and how non of the members are supposed to pin or post anything that is copyrighted unless you actually have the owner of the copyright’s permission. Google Image Search is compared to Pinterest. The conclusion was the Google does not save its images, it merely pulls it from other websites, and if a photo is removed from a certain website then Google does not pull it back up again. As compared to where on Pinterest the image stays on the website.

When posting/pinning to Pinterest you give Pinterest permission to “distribute, sublicense, and sell that content” (Greekgeek).

After reading this is has definitely opened my eye as to what I will be pinning, repining and/or posting onto my Pinterest page. I know a lot of people who have crafting blogs and they want you to pin their stuff so they can get more recognition. So by them saying please feel free to pin things you see, or please pin this if you like it, or something similar to this on their blog page that is giving me permission to post their work.

This article does give Pinterest credit to being a fun website, and assumes that most of its users are not purposely breaking the copyright laws. There is also a link provided in this article on how to use Pinterest legally. At the end of this article there is a side note type of article that gives actual copyright abuse examples. In this article by Amy Locurto, she reports on “photos pinned without credit or link -- and this wasn't the rare exception. One correspondent found that of 100 copies of her photo posted on Pinterest, "maybe 5 were credited.”

It is understandable how a simple pin can lead to many more pins and infringing on the copyright law very easily, if the wrong photo or artwork is pinned. I will definitely pay better attention to the things I pin from here on out.

Jenelle Schiermeister :)