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.

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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

Why You Should Stop Pinning Other People's Images To Pinterest

Pinners are killing the homegrown internet content machine.
Tara Bradford's How image-sharing sites are undermining photography is an absolute must-read for both pinners and content providers.

I say this because Tara provides a comprehensive list of all the rogue image scrapers and crowdscrapers that she must deal with on a daily basis. To pinners, this should vividly illustrate the negative impact that their hobby has on the very people they purport to celebrate. To content creators, the list is a reminder of all the websites that need monitoring.

I must quote Tara here, because I swear my eyes became moist reading this:

After blogging for 7 1/2 years and writing 2,427 posts, I have deleted nearly 1000 posts - and may delete more - to avoid having to track those photos all over the Internet. I've deleted category links to posts within my blog, after at least 3 phishing sites copied every post in several categories (a website was suspended, after posting 91 of my articles). I've changed the original url to many blog posts, after finding the same photos stolen over and over again (with 19 different bridal sites as the culprits!). And I've started adding prominent watermarks to every image I post.

This is what pinners and other crowdscrapers are doing to the internet that I know and love. They are eroding it now, and they will eventually destroy it, leaving nothing but corporate content.

This internet I speak of was once a place that rewarded self-publishing. Freed of the need to please an editor, the costs and delays of print media, authors, photographers, teachers, etc. could use the internet to share information, and derive revenue from advertisement, sponsorships, licensing, print-on-demand etc.

Pinterest and other crowdscrapers incite people to strip that content from the people that create it, and surrender it at the feet of corporate entities.

Loss of vital web traffic and exclusivity of distribution removes the incentive to add more content. As Tara and others start to first stem the flow of content production, block access to image search engines, get tangled up in lawyerly pursuits... the homegrown internet content machine will dry up and die.

Artist Nixes Pinterest

In Why my art will only be found here, romance novel cover artist Patricia Schmitt a.k.a. Pickyme. writes:

So from now on I will only be posting my art on my web site. I will link to my work on FB and Twitter, but will not be uploading to any social media site again. I just want to know where my art is and make sure that others will not profit off of my work.

I get a warm fuzzy feeling when an artist realizes the importance of distributing one's artwork in making a living.



Recommended reading on Pinterest in the March issue of Arizona Attorney: Pinterest and User-Generated Content: Website Liability for Copyright Infringement.

Listed are six separate and exclusive rights of copyright owners, with the 4 below applying to image producers:

• copy or reproduce the work;
• distribute the work;
• display the work;
• make derivative works from the work

It's nice to be reminded about "distribute" and "display," and that there is no provision stating that "proper attribution" absolves infringers.

The article also points out that the DMCA requires that the ISP terminate the account of a "repeat infringer" in "appropriate circumstances" - something that Pinterest makes a big show of, with its fake strike system that never leads to account termination.

However a new "willfull blindness" standard may be applied to Pinterest from being eligible for the DMCA safe harbors.

Let's hope the above comes to pass.

YES, You Can Be Sued.

Roni Loren, writer, describes her adventures in having to settle with a photographer whose copyright she infringed on her blog: You Can Get Sued For Using Pics On You Blog.

...most of us thought if you added commentary, gave attribution, etc., then it was okay. And sites like Pinterest and Tumblr being so popular reinforced that feeling that it must be okay because otherwise--how do those sites even exist, right? Picture sharing is the whole point of those sites.

The blog post and the comments below are a recommended read.

Pinterest An Affiliate of Photo Licensing Site?

Follow the money brick road...

It appears that Pinterest may have worked itself into becoming an affiliate site for iStock Photo.

Please be aware that the Pinterest website is a member of our Affiliate program. The iStockphoto team which handles the affiliate program, continually monitors the usage to ensure it is in line with the program.

The use of the word "affiliate" comes with the expectation that Pinterest would receive commissions for licensing revenue that is generated by traffic referred from its pages. In other words, if someone follows the link to an image posted on Pinterest and purchases rights to use this image from, in this case, iStock photo, Pinterest would receive a commission.

It's not clear why anyone would want to purchase rights to a photo that's all over Pinterest, that's already on a pinner's own pinboard, or that any webmaster can hotlink to from the Pinterest servers without worrying about copyright infringement (Pinterest has the "rights" to distribute the image according to its ToS).

Not much noise has been made to make the photographers on iStock photo aware of this affiliate scheme - possibly because this news might upset some of them.

The money pie isn't infinite, ultimately, who pays for Pinterest's commission? To whom is the burden transferred? Now, and over years?

Is such an affiliate relationship a reason why a photo licensing site would be ignoring copyright violations?

How much extra revenue could this possibly generate? One might suspect "close to zero," but what are the real numbers? How many pinners care about copyright enough to license a photograph? And for what? Their blogs? Their fashion magazine empire? The travel books they are writing? Someone looking to license a photograph won't be looking for it on Pinterest when stock photo websites have convenient search functions.

It's Not Just Images And Recipes, It's Comics, Too.

Don't you miss the days when I posted 2 comics a week, instead of writing rebuttals to Forbes and dealing with bullshit like this?
- Matthew Inman

Our topic today is the Funnyjunk.com vs. The Oatmeal debacle.

If you're not familiar with The Oatmeal, you are missing out on a deliriously funny collection of cartoons and illustrated essays by Matthew Inman, a cat-loving, horse-hating geek with an astute sense of observation.

Now, meet Funnyjunk.com, little more than a Pinterest for comics. Below is Inman's description of Funnyjunk's business model:

1. Gather funny pictures from around the internet
2. Host them on FunnyJunk.com
3. Slather them in advertising
4. If someone claims copyright infringement, throw your hands up in the air and exclaim "It was our users who uploaded your photos! We had nothing to do with it! We're innocent!"
5. Cash six figure advertising checks from other artist's stolen material

Sounds familiar? Right now, Pinterest doesn't have advertising, though it is partnering with stock photo sites for revenues, is recruiting vast amounts of venture capital, and has hired Tim Kendall so the writing is on the wall.

Inman complains that Funnyjunk.com has "practically stolen [his] entire website and mirrored it on FunnyJunk."

The owner of Funnyjunk.com has responded." He hired one Charles Carreon, whose claim to fame was to sue sex.com, to demand $20,000 from Inman for defaming Funnyjunk.com on the internet. You know this is true because it's not possible to make up things like this.

In answer to this ridiculous demand for money, Inman counter-offered to donate, from a donation campaign targeting his fans, the required amount to charitable organizations of his choice (National Wildlife Federation and Cancer Society). He raised over $200,000 so far.

On June 21, the Electronic Frontier Foundation announced that it will represent Matthew Inman against a "bizarre lawsuit targeting critical online speech." Does it stop here? No, as Charles Carreon himself is now suing, on his own behalf this time, "Inman, the two charities, and the online fundraising platform IndieGoGo, claiming trademark infringement and incitement to “cyber-vandalism.”" Carreon dropped the law suit during the first week of July.

There will come a time when all of the web will miss the days when content creators were publishing abundantly, instead of fighting against user-based content scrapers like Pasplore, Funnyjunk and Pinterest hiding behind the DMCA safe harbor.

Block My Website Please

Devina Divecha writes, in Pinterest — friend or foe?, "I cannot, in good faith, become a Pinterest user until the copyright infringement issues are resolved." She continues: "The website itself is trying to provide a temporary fix to those concerned about copyright by providing an “opt out” code for blog and website owners, who can incorporate into their websites preventing people from pinning their work."

Temporary fix? Never mind the "opt out" code being a temporary fix, Pinterest has the technical ability to easily block pinning from any website from their end. Is Pinterest bothering to tell people about this much easier fix for webmasters? No, of course not. Pinterest wants to make it as difficult as possible for artists whose content is infringed upon.

Anyone interested in having their website blocked from pinning doesn't need to bother recoding anything. Just write an angry letter to copyright@pinterest.com and they will do it for you.

More Music Lessons

In Music Lessons, we made some parallels between the piracy-induced decline of the music industry with Pinterest, and predicted a similar decline in the availability and quality of image content on the internet. The article in refence, David Lowery's Letter to Emily White has gone "viral" and the phenomenon has given rise to numerous rebuttals along with the praise.

The comments to the rather toothless rebuttal article A WSJ Intern Replies To An NPR Intern’s Viral Post on Music Piracy are more revealing than the article itself. While one commenter bemoans, statistics in hand that

"[...] recorded music has gone from a $12B business in 2001 to a $6B business in 2011. About 35% of that 19% is 7900 Petabytes which was 11 billion movies consumed that people didn’t pay for. That is why Home Video has gone from a $26B business to an $18B business. Pirate Bay is the 81st most popular web site, more popular than Netflix and way more popular than Spotify. ISPs made $50B in 2011 selling a service that comes with free music, free movies, free software, free games and free books. the solution is for ISPs to obey the law and terminate repeat infringers."

another commenter adds, taking a completely different angle:

It’s not because we’re poor, we’re just living in a high speed world where we want access to EVERYTHING… EVERYWHERE and it’s services like iTunes, Spotify and Pirate Bay (listed in descending order of benefit to musicians) that are providing us with that.[...]This will cause a total lull in musical creativity, inspiration, originality and general interest in music until the industry devolves into being a totally non profitable market for anyone because no one will care to consume it anymore. It’s bleak, man.

Interestingly, a more robust rebuttal of David Lowery's piece on Boing Boing has elicited some angry backlash... against the rebuttal itself:

"The issue, for me, isn't whether millions of hobbyists can squeeze out $100 a year while technology companies skim millions from the transactions, but whether a professional class of musicians, artists, writers, filmmakers, etc. can still exist in this country."

"Morrison posted an opinion that "we shared music when it was casettes". And then didn't bother to inquire whether the amount of sharing in any way equated to digital sharing."

From the camp of "Love The Art, Hate The Artist":

"Do you know any musicians who make music only for money? I don't. They make music because they can't stop themselves from making music. And they have day jobs."

"Quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock."

"If you want to sing, sing. But, for God's sake, stop complaining about how you're being oppressed because the rest of us don't want to support you while you do it."

"It's been coming for awhile. Musicians have officially become boring."

"The free content crowd doesn't value artists. And they're nasty about it too. Nicely done."

Until Pinterest came along, graphical content was largely untouched by piracy. Ben Silbermann has found a way to tap into this poor cousin of "sharable content" with a platform geared towards the hoarding of third-party digital images by its users, adding a further leaching of creator's copyright with an embed feature that is little more than a gateway to a hotlinking free-for-all of this infringed content.

What is the adaptive path for visual artist with respect to their partnership with the internet?

REDUCE CONTENT. Reduce definition. Reduce size. Reduce availability. Institute a pay-per-view. Charge for website access. Educate the masses.

We may be fighting Pinterest now; tomorrow, we'll be fighting hundreds of Pinterest clones.

Pressuring Pinterest & Pinners

Everyone who has raised a child knows how difficult it is to be heard by those little ones when they have decided that they just don't want to hear.

How can artists get pinners' attention? Words will fall on deaf ears, therefore, all we have left are actions. They do, after all, speak louder than words.

Public relations:
(1) Google "pinterest copyright infringement" - click on "more search tools" on the left menu and select "last 24 hours" or "last week" and make sure that the anti-Pinterest voice is one of the first in the comment sections of articles about Pinterest. Enlighten the audience on what pinners seem to understand the least: how Pinterest "publicity" doesn't help every artist's business model, that it doesn't help yours, and that it's not their right to make the assumption that artists seek fame above all, and saddle us with endless DMCAs take downs.

(2) Log in to your Pinterest account, and repin copyright warning images from Pin Hammer's pin boards

If you have your own website:
As instructed in this post Educate Pinners With .htaccess, hijack pin requests to substitute an image containing a stern copyright warning.

If copyright has occurred, you have some options:
(1) Be vigilant with your content and serve as many DMCA notices as necessary, emailing copyright@pinterest.com, not the automated form on Pinterest's website. The blank frames where images use to be will linger and serve as a reminder that infringement has occurred and that there are artists that do not welcome it.

(2) Log in to your Pinterest account and post some version of the below in the infringing pin's comment section:

You have posted my image without permission. By taking away my lawful right to distribute this image and handing this right to Pinterest, you are making it more difficult for me to earn money from my work. You are helping Pinterest make money from my work instead of me. Please help artists continue to be able to derive an income from self-publishing on the internet by not pining their work. I'd rather you remove the image, but if you really want to keep it on Pinterest, my licensing rate for every posting/re-pinning on a Pinterest pinboard is $250.00/yr. Again, I would prefer if you remove the image because Pinterest has no hotlink protection.

To quote a commenter on Pinterest announces new terms of service & that private boards are coming soon:

Despite first necessary changes to protect the Pinterest founder from major lawsuits the conflict with copyright persists. The majority of pinboard owners still do not and will not care about copyright. Also Pinterest can trust that the majority of copyright owners will not take the effort to constantly check illegal pins. From my point of view Pinterest tries to get away with a “dirty deal” between them and their users (silent agreement to tolerate uncounted copyright infringement)as cheap as possible. Only if and when copyright owners (can) protest they will finally do something. I do not think that this is a basis for an ethical business conduct.

WE NEED TO KEEP THE PROTEST ALIVE. EVERY DAY.

B-I-G D-E-A-L

So. In Pinterest Gives Copyright Credit to Etsy, Kickstarter, SoundCloud, we find out that Pinterest is making some "effort" to give un-editable attribution to some big corporate friends.

BIG.
DEAL.

These corporate friends are Etsy, a well-known online craft bazaar, Kickstarter, a funding platform that's probably just a publicity-hog anyway, and SoundCloud, a music-sharing website that allows a pinner to "pin" actual songs to their pinboard, with copyright-infringement issues of its own (see this article, although they are reputed to be meticulously pro-active in their infringement detection, quite unlike Pinterest).

Just like when Pinterest removed the word "sell" from their Terms of Use, and rolled out the arrogant nopin metatag that turned copyright on its head as something that doesn't exist for Pinterest until you recode all your thousands of static pages (in some cases) to affirm your copyright against their users, this is another completely useless news report that gives the appearance that Pinterest is making some progress on the respect-copyright front when it is doing nothing at all, as usual.

Attribution doesn't absolve copyright infringement.

Halting copyright infringement may not even be on Pinterest's agenda. This may be due to Pinterest's very existence and popularity appearing to be entirely derived out of the feverish infringement binge of its users, enabled by the convenient pinmarklet.

One cannot be surprised that when Pinterest makes headlines about copyright, it's not even about copyright. It's just more smoke and mirrors to coddle its users into thinking they're working really hard for us creators, and to seat copyright infringement on the thrones of angels.


Attribution is necessary, but over-rated.
The "money" rests in distribution, not fame.

Blank Pins

Perusing Pinterest reveals an increasing number of blank pins -
Presumably, the result of DMCA take downs.

In this post, a list of domain names for which blank pins are found, will be updated regularly. Feel free to add to the list in the comment section.

alinasadventuresinhomemaking.com
designsponge.com
diddledumpling.blogspot.com
graphicsfairy.blogspot.com
midnightsunantiques.com
patternsshop.com
projectsbyjess.blogspot.com
puglypixel.com
purlbee.com
sugarandcharmblog.com
tipjunkie.com

Pinterest Bracing Self Against Lawsuit(s)?

Several weeks after hiring Tim Kendall, Facebook's monetization man, Pinterest has enlisted no less than former Google Deputy General Counsel Michael Yang as its first General Counsel.

To speculate, it is possible that Pinterest will take advice and actually become respectful of copyrights and take serious steps to educate their users. It is also possible that Pinterest intends to unleash punishing legal challenges should any creator(s) dare to take them on.

If creators are hoping to continue making a living off their images and protecting their copyrights against the actions of Pinterest's users and those of present and future Pinterest-clone users, they must make their voices heard - they will have to scream at the top of their web-lungs. Begging "pinners" to try to understand their plight or educating "pinners" (something Pinterest seems loathe to do) on how pinning may hurt creators' livelihoods.

There are some that think creators have already lost the battle, and ought to give up their copyrights and associated livelihoods lest they become the "bad guys."

I’m wondering if everyone has come to the same conclusion: no company is ever going to bring a copyright infringement suit against a Pinterest user. [...] Sending a Pinterest user a letter instructing them to remove your copyrighted materials and accusing them of copyright infringement is [...] a total slap in the face.
-Catlan McCurdy

While Ms. Mc Curdy sides with the popular internet behemoth, the small artists continue to hurt: Ellen Ward, who publishes wonderfully spontaneous drawings, is another David against the Pinterest-Goliath.

Do we have a slingshot?

Finding Your Work On Pinterest PART 8

After a DMCA take-down using their online form, Pinterest does not remove every version of your image.

It keeps two, sometimes a third, all of which are publicly accessible, and very much hotlink-able. Two are very large.

This is such an egregious violation of the DMCA safe harbor, nothing else needs to be said. Be sure never to use their online form. Always email them a list of all images as instructed here.
Ouch.

Pinalerts.com

Pinalerts sends you email notifications of new pins from website(s).
Any website. Doesn't have to be your own.

Pinnablebusiness.com, located in Orem, Utah, is quite enthusiastic with the Pinterest bandwagon. They're so completely enamored with the marketing possibilities that they are offering a tool for marketers to monitor the success of their pins on a new, separate website called PinAlerts.com.

The idea might occur that this tool could be used for monitoring new copyright infringements on Pinterest.

Results were disappointing. Pinalerts only reads the first page from the http://pinterest.com/source/your-website-url.com URL.

It doesn't read http://pinterest.com/source/your-website-url.com/?page=2 and pages up to 9.

Too bad.

Ben Silbermann's New Account

When the copyright infringement monster made its presence felt under the beds of pinners everywhere, Ben Silbermann himself deleted his own boards at http://pinterest.com/ben/, a URL that now leads to a 404-not-found page. He did, however, start a new one from scratch, under the rather disingenuous guise of wanting the experience what it is like to be a debuting pinner all over again. Right.



CLICK HERE to view Silbermann's new (possibly) copyright-respecting boards. Limiting, isn't it, Ben?

Pinterest: A Short History Of Dissent

FEBRUARY
Why I tearfully Deleted My Pinterest Inspiration Boards The floodgates open here.

Not Pining Over Pinning - Why I said Goodbye To Pinterest Because I've stopped to think about art. And about artists/photographers/writers/etc.[...] about what happens when the individual who made the piece can't control how it's used, but a corporation can.

Five Reasons Why I Hate Pinterest “OMG!!1 did you find this on Pinterest?”. Nope, actually found it on thebeautydepartment.com or other wonderful original content website/blog.

How Pinterest removed all my pinned images in minutes Note: Pinterest is now wise to this trick, it didn't work for me.

Pinterest Blocking Meta Tag Using the disallowing metatag is not a solution to the predatory behaviour Pinterest encourages.

Pinterest and “Pinning Etiquette” ...credit and/or a link is not a way to get around copyright infringement.

Thoughts From Others on Pinterest So Pinterest wants to make it easy for you to take any of the infringed work they have on their servers, and include it in any blog post you feel like. No need to license artwork. They’re teaching everyone to help themselves to the buffet of infringed upon works they have collected.

Pinterest: Delightful, Addictive, Theft ...more than early Napster, more than Megaupload, more than any government-seized hip-hop blog, Pinterest is entirely copyright-infringement.

Is Pinterest the new Napster? The rate of usage reflects the fact that, like Napster, those who use the service often become addicted to getting access to the best content in one place, in this case images.

It's Not A Secret There have been a few articles popping up discussing Pinterest’s use of Skimlinks, so we wanted to dive in and talk about what they are doing, as it’s not a secret or sneaky or covert, but a very popular, mainstream, and valuable approach to content monetization.

The Problem With Pinterest SO MANY of these are stolen photos my friends. Stolen from the photographers who took them, some who make their living off of them.

Pinterest Comes With Pros And Cons For Photographers The DMCA shields services like pinterest that display user content, but that doesn't mean that the users themselves are not in violation, it just means pinterest can't be held liable for the action. Pinterest is pretty disingenuous on this issue—their terms tell people only to post material for which they have permission or rights while knowing perfectly well that the services is designed for and encourages them to post material mostly without permission.

Is Pinterest a Haven for Copyright Violations? If someone pins a photo on Pinterest, they've created a competing version of the image, which could siphon image search traffic away from the source site.

Pinterest is Changing How I Blog I have so many fun ideas that I’d love to share, but I’d also like to create products out of those designs eventually… so it’s leaving me unsure of where to go from here with my blog.

Pinterest and an artist’s dilemma Pinterest is different. When you add a new pin, you’re asked for the address of a web page; the site loads the page, pulls a prominent image from the page, and shows it within Pinterest. While you’re viewing your friends’ pins, there’s no direct way to visit the original source; a source link is only available on the pin detail popup. (Clicking the full-size image or the inconspicuous source link above the image sends you to the source site.) These popups show images at full size, so there’s very little motivation for normal users to visit the original author’s site; the Pinterest user can view everything from his friends without ever leaving the site.

Pinterest’s Quiet Copyright CoupPinterest is merely putting the proverbial lipstick on their copyright abusing pig. Pinterest users can STILL save any image from any website, and upload it to Pinterest (removing any value to the originating site) where it can then be repinned into oblivion.

When did it become OK to take someone’s stuff without asking?[Pinterest] also creates a decent-sized copy of the image, which it hosts on its own servers and displays to Pinterest visitors. Unless you’ve got any desire to see the photo at its full resolution or want to find out more about a particular link, there’s no great incentive to look any further.

MARCH
Pinterest: A Broken Business Model So by their own admission Pinterest isn’t primarily for publishing original creative work, but republishing the work of third parties who almost inevitably will not have given permission. [...]Pinterest is a cynical exercise that enables and encourages others to steal and is profiting from those thefts, while simultaneously attempting to plead innocence and place the blame on those who Pinterest encouraged to steal in the first place. But when the lawyers come calling, as they surely will, Pinterest may find that by shafting both creators and consumers of culture they have precious few friends left to defend them.

Pinterest has a Loaded TOS… Don’t Accept it However, as a web developer who just had to put that snippet onto my clients’ websites I don’t think it’s a good direction to head where one business model requires every website on the Internet to opt out of their environment. Here’s a better idea… ask us if we want to opt into the Pinterest service… let those websites willing to play in the little sandpit of their business model to put a piece of code into every clients website.

Some More Pinterest Detective Work ...are they missing the hidden usage – that of Pinterest’s users monetizing others’ works in a commercial marketing way?

Is Pinterest a copyright time bomb? [Pinterest] relies on its terms of use to 'ensure' — and by that I mean a wink and nod — that all images are owned by the users who post them. So millions of users, using browser add-its for grabbing photos, are of course just doing this on their own websites, right? And if they're not, Pinterest would be shocked.

Could Pinterest become the next Napster? When you take it without payment, you effectively reduce the ability of artists, photographers to create more good stuff, because they are not compensated for it

What Does Pinterest Look Like Without Copyrighted Content? To continue existing, Pinterest is required to write terms of service that, if fully and actively enforced, would destroy the site.

Pinterest Founder Nukes His Own Account [Silbermann's] account, which had nearly a million followers and almost 4000 pins, was quietly pulled offline a few weeks ago. A modest replacement has been started from scratch. "Starting a fresh new account to remember how new Pinterest user's [sic] feel!”

APRIL
Copyright Infringement Made Cool Pinterest might claim that they have no knowledge of each individual infringement, but are they really unaware that infringement is taking place across a wide spectrum of their user base? Good luck convincing a jury of that.

Copyright Infringement Makes Me Buck Like Bodacious When the electric bill comes, you can’t tell the electric company, “I will credit your name to pay for the bill.”

Why I’m Not a Pinterest Fan: A Small Seller’s Point of View While I do get marginal traffic from Pinterest (and by marginal I mean less than 50 total referrals over a month, far fewer than my other networks), it’s not proportionate to the amount of views, repins, likes, etc., that I get on Pinterest.

Copyright Infringement Makes Me Buck Like Bodacious When the electric bill comes, you can’t tell the electric company, “I will credit your name to pay for the bill.”

Pinterest Copyright Concerns ...if it is illegal I am sure something will be done.

The End Of The Road For Free Patterns I have been cornered into making a decision against my own wishes by an unstoppable copyright-infringement steamroller called Pinterest. AKA Napster-for-Images. [...] ...from now on, all the new patterns will be for sale, and only small thumbnails will be shown on the web pages.

Pinning a Lawsuit on You Perhaps the distinction between Pinterest and other internet sites is nothing more than its prominence and focus on image sharing.

Read the fine print; 'Sharing' can get you sued Luther says it's not enough to simply credit the writer, photographer, or artist whose work you're posting. You need to get official permission from the source, because sites like Pinterest, YouTube and Facebook likely won't stand behind you in a lawsuit.

Companies Using Pinterest, Be Careful Not to Get Pricked If the DMCA protects anyone, it is Pinterest and not its users.

Companies Using Pinterest, Be Careful Not to Get Pricked Like Grokster, Pinterest has not employed filtering technology to diminish infringing activity and employs a business model in which "the commercial sense of their enterprise turns on high-volume use."

MAY
No Interest In Pinterest I’ve reached critical mass in my frustration around my images being used without permission elsewhere on the internet, but particularly Pinterest.

Pinterest site's massive repository of RB artwork Now with 77 pages of objections.

Copyright Watch: The Liability-Proof World of Pinterest Pinterest puts all legal risk squarely in the lap of its users, while reaping the rewards of their free labor, the free content they upload and their growing appeal to potential advertisers.

Pinterest Traffic Drops Due To Copyright Issues Concerns over Pinterest’s terms of use, specifically ownership of pinned content, caused many dedicated users to delete accounts in fear that they would be held accountable for copyright infringement.

Pinterest - the next Facebook or unlawful copyright infringement? ...be aware that Pinterest’s terms also require you to indemnify them for any liability in using other people’s material; i.e. if they get sued because of what you posted, they can give you the bill and their lawyer’s bill too.

Could Affiliate Links Kill Pinterest? when Pinterest modifies a pin by altering the structure of a link, they stop being an online service provider facilitating users who share content and become a curator of content actively engaged in changing the way it gets shared. Put another way, changing a link could be construed as a form of editorial control.

Changing the Culture of Copyright: Though the Pinterest Terms of Service mandate that users post their own content or have permission to post any third-party content, in reality, the platform implicitly encourages users to pin third-party content regardless of whether the user has obtained permission from the content owner to do so and without necessarily attributing the source of the content. [...] Pinterest itself may be vulnerable to claims of direct and/or secondary liability. In MGM Studios Inc. v. Grokster Ltd ., 545 U.S. 913 (2005), the Supreme Court ruled that Grokster and StreamCast (dba Morpheus) could be held liable for facilitating the commission of massive amounts of copyright infringement by end users who employed the defendants' peer-to-peer software to copy and redistribute music and films to each other's hard drives.

The Future Of Images On The Internet

Today, the spotlight is on you.

What is your principal source of revenue arising from the display of your art on the internet?

As an artist/photographer/creator, what measures are you considering taking in the short term to minimize copyright infringement?

What measures are you considering in the longer term?

What do you predict will be the ultimate effect of the erosion of image copyright on the internet?

Are there parallels to be made with the music industry?

Finding Your Work On Pinterest PART 7

Pinterest doesn't automatically delete images pinners have chosen as folder cover decoration (highlighted in red above)
following a DMCA take-down notice.

If you file a DMCA notice for an image, you'll notice that one of the two versions Pinterest fails to remove is the one that a pinner may have chosen to use as a folder cover image. That's right. They don't remove everything. Pinterest will force you to chase that URL separately.

If that wasn't annoying enough, the folder cover images are wrapped in script attributes that block Firefox from being able to fetch the image URL by right-clicking on it. A creator trying to protect their copyright not only needs to jumps through endless loops to get their infringed work properly taken down, he or she has to deal with a behemoth of a passive-aggressive organization working tirelessly against the rights of artists to retain the rights to distribute their own work. It's not in Pinterest's business model to give artists that don't want their images pinned any help.

While these images are smaller than full-size, they are mere decoration and lead nowhere, and making an image smaller doesn't automatically make it "fair use."

To find the URL of these folder cover images, you will need to view the source code. In IE, View>Page Source, and in Firefox, Ctrl U.

Search the page of code for the character string: uploads/cover and you will find the URLs of the infringing cover images. They are in this format:

http://media-cache-00.pinterest.com/uploads/cover_44965111168526458_44911116249811115_vcbpTZeT_1111198251.jpg

Like A Plague Of Locusts

If you think it's already difficult to chase your content on Pinterest's servers, imagine what it will be like when some of its clones start to become popular.
There are many ways to join them if you can't beat them - joining Pinterest and posting your pictures on it is the least imaginative and the least profitable.

There is better!

SEO Toolster markets a Pinterest clone script, reasonably priced at $749, with free installation. Cogzidel offers you Pinderful, another remarkably similar knockoff for just $299. The aptly named Pinterest Clones, produced by Social Curation Solutions, features a similar app for under $200.

These scripts are shockingly faithful reproductions of Pinterest's look and functionality. It's a wonder that Pinterest isn't suing them for... copyright infringement.

Some of the clones are already trying to make inroads with different target clienteles. Many have chosen to concentrate their efforts on a language and a country (this may explain Pinterest's recent urgency in trying to go international). Others are jumping on Pinterest's cast offs, and specializing in pornography.

Why not jump on the copyright-infringement gravy train, and run your own Pinterest? Call it "Pinfringe." It's probably a lot less work and more money than what you are doing now, something that is almost always true of dishonest work.

Should You Allow Your Images To Be Pinned?

Many artists and webmasters have to decide whether to allow their pictorial work to be broadcast by Pinterest with incomplete information.

RECIPE SITES
Do you have a recipe blog or website where large-scale off-site display of your image may result in increasing the number of visitors following the link to fetch your recipe? Your case may be one of the rare instances where Pinterest traffic may represent a valuable boost. Indeed, Google Trends show that the most oft-visited websites by pinners are recipe-related. Such traffic boost may make it worth your while to ignore possible erosion of your search engine rankings from duplicate content penalties and the damages from fourth-party webmasters exploiting your images through the EMBED button.

SALES
If your website sells products, and the images are little more than visual aids to promote sales, devoid of artistic embellishments, you may need to monitor visitor activity closely to make a decision. At this time, there are vastly conflicting results as to the worth of Pinterest traffic as a sales driver, ranging from "god-awful" to "amazing," so it's safe to assume that it depends on the products you are peddling.

CRAFT SALES
In the event that you are selling crafts or objects that while pretty, may have very little practical value to the owner, pinners may feel satisfied from viewing the image, aka being inspired, translating into very few sales. To be fair, this may be true whether the visitor browses Etsy directly, or comes to a specific page from a Pinterest link. The real danger here is a mass exodus of people browsing Etsy for "inspiration" and perhaps a purchase, to Pinterest for "strictly viewing." Instead of buying that special item they will "acquire" it by adding it to their pin/repin collection, changing how a craft is consumed as an object, to being consumed more as its image.

Over time, the proportion of images displayed that have been already SOLD will increase, and people may become leery of following links to Etsy expecting to reach a SOLD page. In many instances, normal consumer behavior would cause one to expect that a much-repinned craft image will lose its appeal as something representing one's unique eclectic tastes.

It should be noted that Etsy is NOT among the top 10 sites visited by pinners.

The high quality of photographs on Etsy and the artistic nature of what they depict make them prime targets for EMBED button exploitation, and the images will end up on the websites of lazy webmasters trying to cobble together micromoney-making websites on subjects they often know nothing about, using other people's content. These embedded images may frequently supplant the creator's own images in image searches.

Over time, one might predict that overall, the existence of Pinterest will be a lose-lose proposition for Etsy, as a direct competitor and sales black hole.

LICENSING
Photographers depending on licensing their images are very divided on the issue - as divided as there are ways to exploit licensing. While some worry about the popularity of some of their images on Pinterest making it near impossible to license, because no sucker wants to pay to display an image that is displayed for free everywhere, even at a higher definition or in another medium (like print), others seem to feel that the very display of their watermark may bring them more business.

CAFE PRESS STYLE MERCHANDISING
It's unlikely that the kind of activity on Pinterest will result in someone paying to buy your image printed on a T-shirt or a mug. Pinners are on Pinterest to look and share pictures for free, and have their egos stroked for their great imaginary style, not to buy merchandise - except for a few lucky impulse purchases, it's not clear whether it's worth having your images re-broadcast by way of embeding in fourth-party websites.

GENERAL TRAFFIC
For most other websites with have a traffic-based monetizing strategy, having their images reproduced on Pinterest is quite likely to be a traffic sink that is bound to hurt more and more as Pinterest grows.

General information websites range from mostly textual, with images as decoration, to completely pictorial. At one end of the spectrum, a site with much text, and few images, pinning these images may bring a trickle of traffic that may not otherwise discover the site, and be actually interested in the written details. Further, even if all the images of a website whose images represent 5% of the content, Pinterest will still only exploit 5% of that content, and any damage to image search engine rankings may be of little consequence.

At the other extreme of this same spectrum, a site with largely pictorial content could literally have its entire content copied over and over on Pinterest, meaning that Pinterest exploits 100% of that website's content, and erosion of the original content's search engine rankings for images for duplicate penalties favoring Pinterest-hosted images may have dire consequences. Pinterest's EMBED function simply add further injury after a fatal wound. Any traffic from Pinterest is likely to be unproductive, since an image-based website offers little more than what the visitor has already seen on Pinterest.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
Unless search engines process Pinterest differently from other websites, having one's images pinned and repinned on Pinterest is quite likely to hurt one's organic rankings.

Images are subject to duplicate content penalties.

EMBED button leads back to pin page, not original source.

Overall, Pinterest creates many more links towards itself than to the original source.

Pinterest recreates each pin in 4 different size formats.

The multiplicity of some images on Pinterest, and all their repins, increases the likelihood that image searches will weigh in Pinterest's favor rather than the original source.

ON PRINCIPLES
An artist may want to share art and believe that no one should profit from the display and distribution of creative work on the internet and that making a living from art soils it, even if this means that in the long run, the quality and quantity of this collective body work is bound to decrease. Another artist may not have figured out how to monetize their work and be willing to give it away for others to distribute, and may appreciate the attention.

Some artists may not want their work on Pinterest simply on principle - even if they believe that upon the whole, they are neither winning or losing. They may feel that Ben Silbermann has no business becoming a millionaire off their work, combined with the work of their peers, taken without permission, and against copyright laws. They may not want their work posted on websites they do not approve of through the abomination that is the EMBED code. They may understand the importance, for the long-term survival of digital display of art on the internet, that copyrights be respected.