Monday, October 14, 2013

Update On .htaccess

Back in June 2012, I wrote: Educate Pinners With .htaccess with instructions on how to allow pinning... except not of the image that pinners intend to pin, but a substituted image with a message about copyright.

I noticed that this strategy has recently stopped working because Pinterest no longer identifies itself as "Pinterest" in web logs when one of their relentless crowscrapers infringes on your copyright. Now Pinterest is using the longer form: +http://pinterest.com

If you want to continue substituting the pinned images with a copyright warning, you must update your .htaccess file with the following lines:
RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Pinterest [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png)$ http://media-cache-ec0\.pinterest\.com/upload/44965696249836704_DMXjrNee_f\.jpg [R]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} \+http://pinterest\.com/ [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png)$ http://media-cache-ec0\.pinterest\.com/upload/44965696249836704_DMXjrNee_f\.jpg [R]
The command for the old identifier "Pinterest" remains in case they mysteriously revert to it. This is the copyright warning that is being substituted:

Pinterest Is The Most Despicable Website On The Internet

Remember how you used to be able to check for copyright infringement with this URL?
http://pinterest.com/source/mywebsite.com
Not anymore. Now you have to join Pinterest and log into it. If you don't, you get this prompt:


That's right; Pinterest won't even let you check for copyright infringement on your own website without you SIGNING UP and AGREEING TO THEIR TERMS OF SERVICE. Isn't that outrageous? Their gall is just obscene. Once you're logged in, and filing your DMCA take-down notice, these unscrupulous fiends know who you are and have proof that you agreed to their TOS. Talk about covering their filthy keisters against the arm of justice.

All these people out there, thinking they're collecting pretty pictures, they have no idea what a disgusting organization their "hobby" is enriching, at whose expense, and the pain they are inflicting on artists.

===============


If that's not annoying enough, the DMCA form has been plagued with bugs for months that Pinterest sure is in no hurry to fix, trying to make it as difficult as possible for the victims of their relentless crowdscraping.

We have to deal with:
  • Explanations for "strike" and "remove all" that pop up all over the area where you are trying to click on the radio buttons.
  • These pop up explanations cover up the fact that the radio buttons for the first pin and those for the second pin TOGGLE AGAINST EACH OTHER in a way that sabotages ALL multiple-complaint submissions, and result in a rejection with the message "this field is required" and a blanking out of many the field below that need to be re-entered (country, tick-boxes, signature). They are forcing you to do everything TWICE. For months.
  • These bugs have been there so long that Pinterest MUST be doing this on purpose to harass copyright holders, or it's their absolute lowest priority. They want us to give up.

Every artist's Pinterest nightmare

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Customize The No-Pin Meta-tag

Did you know that you can now display your own custom message when someone attempts to pin from your website?

<meta name = "pinterest" content = "nopin" description = "Buzz off my images, PIN HAG!" />

Saturday, October 5, 2013

More Reading Material

The Perils Of Pinterest - great article and comments.

Pinteres Is Not A Source - the only problem is that attribution does not mitigate copyright infringement...

Bing Adds Pinterest Collections To Image Search - More bad news.

Pinterest and My Ethics - How I Changed My Mind = Grrrrrr:
I’m going to be sharing anything that I want on my Pinterest. If someone out there decides to be a jerk about what I share, then I will happily remove any offending thing. I will also write a bubble about them and share with the world how they are part of the SUCK. I’m using my own moral compass for Pinterest, or as Peloquin said on “Nightbreed” said “F*** the Law”. I want to share the awesome, not steal anything. Don’t blame me for Pinterest’s screwed up policies and code.

5 Reasons Why Starbucks’ Pinterest Strategy is Not A Big Hit - aka "Starbucks Infringes Copyright On Pinterest And Is A Terrible Example."


Pinterest moves away from images with “Article Pins” - Here we go: after the images, the text. Didn't we see that one coming?