Stamping Out Pinterest

Great post on the Stamp Out Stamp Theft blog - more artists upset with Pinterest.

I was told once by one person that she would not remove the image until Pinterest told her to. I'm not sure they really care about our complaints. It looks like they have a special form that needs to be filled out by the owners.

Pinterest Police

The Paris Hotel Boutique blog has a pet peeve. The author is annoyed when she receives a negative content or a correction regarding an image that she probably pillaged from another website, photographer, or Google Images. The nerve! Of course, the image illustrating the blog was taken from some other website.

The author's biggest pet peeve is the Pinterest Police. According to this misguided blogger, Pinterest must be actively searching for copyright infringement, and is harassing poor pinners that don't properly credit their sources.

When pinning, please try and find the original source for credit.

Hey, Pinterest doesn't care.

Legally, we're supposed to ask for permission from the photographer.

But clearly no one does - burdening artists and photographers with a never-ending chore of finding their content on Pinterest and writing take-down notices. Please stop pinning without permission especially since you know it's wrong.

As Predicted...

As predicted in Exploiting Pinterest's Embed Feature, semi-automated or fully automated scraper sites are re-arranging Pinterest's crowdscraped content for further redistribution but especially PROFIT.

May this serve as a reminder for those that are flattered when their material is "pinned" - when the horses run out of the barn, there is no telling how far they'll go.

To wit: craftprojectimage.com.

Every content creator's favorite byline is displayed on this scraper blog:

No copyright infringement intended. The source of each image and it's related text is always linked to with the 'source' link at the bottom of each post.

Except that the "source link" leads back to Pinterest, not to the content provider's own website.

And the below, a reminder for everyone that argues that "Pinterest makes no money!!!":

This website uses third-party advertising companies to serve ads to visitors of this site and may use information (not including visitors' name, addresses, e-mail addresses, or telephone numbers) about visits to this website to provide ads which are of interest to the visitors. It is advised to install a dependable anti-virus software and firewall on visitor's computer so as to have optimum safety from computer virus attacks.

Pinterest may make no money beyond raising venture capital by exploiting other people's content by way of crowdscraping, but there is nothing to stop fourth-party scraper sites to exploit the EMBED feature and actually profit from copyright infringement.

The "flattery" of having one's artistic material ravaged by pinners comes at the cost of being used a tool by internet pirate to draw visitors, and infect their computers.

Banned From Pinterest

Blogger Mark Ewbie reports, in Hubpages, having been banned from Pinterest!

Could it be the copyright police finally doing its job?

Is Pinterest's strike system not a sham?

It is still a complete and utter sham, because Marke Ewbie was banned for self-promotion, aka, posting his own copyrighted content instead of other people's.

What I fail to do is observe the unwritten rule about sharing lots of other people’s stuff, and only a little of mine. I say “Unwritten”. Fact is that it is written all over the place.

Thus, instead respecting copyrights, Pinterest is actively coercing people into riding the copyright-infringement bandwagon that they have created. This is in stark contrast with their stated corporate copyright policy:

Pinterest (“Pinterest”) respects the intellectual property rights of others and expects its users to do the same. It is Pinterest’s policy, in appropriate circumstances and at its discretion, to disable and/or terminate the accounts of users who repeatedly infringe or are repeatedly charged with infringing the copyrights or other intellectual property rights of others.

The above, as we all know here, is the worst kind of empty posturing.

Fellow Artist, I Feel Your Pain

They Stole My Art

You are not alone.

Article Worth Pointing Out

The Examiner.com's Eric George, in Long, Hot and Expensive Summer writes:

The firing of a newspaper blogger for informing the general public that Pinterest is not copyright infringement. Well, the paper was about to get sued into oblivion because some people on Pinterest used that as a defense in their cases and LOST.

The bottom line is it is going to be a very long and very hot and very expensive summer for infringers and the providers who have dumped everything on the users. It may not happen this year if things are appealed but the ship is sinking and the rats are running to get off and move the infringing materials to other companies they buy overseas. I hope the new system coming in allows them to be sued even if they do that.

Regrettably, no sources are given or names mentioned. I can't ascribe a comfortable level of credibility to the article but I thought I'd share anyway!

Outrage of the month

In Pinterest photos: Can they be used without copyright infringement?, author "bevcohen" writes:

What I find very confusing is why Pinterest users are allowed to pin pictures from all over the internet without regard for their rights to use those pictures. Public domain or not, pictures are continually being pinned.

And pictures on Pinterest can be re-pinned. If that’s the case, it seems reasonable that we should be able to use those pictures on posts at Bubblews or anywhere else.

So instead of searching the internet for public domain pictures that we can use without copyright infringement, Pinterest might be a great one-stop photo shopping site. Any thoughts?

Any thought? Yes, disturbing thoughts. As most of us creatives have feared when becoming aware of the existence of Pinterest, the public's perception of an image posted on Pinterest is that this image is fair game for them to use on whatever website they feel like.

Legal Issue Settled?

In a blog post by Mydesert.com, Maureen Gilmer re-assures her readers that "pinning pictures is not copyright infringement." Now we know?

No, pinning pictures is not copyright infringement, but the jury is still out about whether or not it’s a threat to artists and photographers. Many are using watermarks on their pictures to emphasize it’s copyrighted within the Pinterest system.

Ironically, the author's images on the blog have buttons labelled "PURCHASE IMAGE" with a shopping cart icon. I am not kidding. You can't make this stuff up. I repeat: she is trying to sell rights to the images she posted on the blog! Not only that, but she claims with obvious pride that the images are pinned all over Pinterest already!

Who will purchase her images, when, as indicated in the images' caption, they are pinned all over Pinterest? I can just hotlink them from Pinterest with the EMBED code, then Maureen can sue to original pinner, and not me. Besides, it's not copyright infringement, right?

How can she say that "the jury is still out about whether or not it’s a threat to artists and photographers" when she should have the perfect vantage point to know that it is a threat to her selling rights to her photos?

I hate to be mean, but that was one of the most ignorant things I've ever read.

Absolute MUST-READ

Photographer Tara Bradford relates a story, in This photo is not free: Nikken EU & copyright infringement, where a company infringed on her copyright for commercial and promotional endeavors, and incredibly, is refusing to pay her a very reasonable, non-punitive fee of $535.00 for the photo, because, their spokesperson claims, THEY TOOK THE PICTURE FROM PINTEREST and Tara should suck it up. The company is even refusing to apologize.

This is absolutely outrageous.

According to Tara,

[The spokesperson's] argument blamed the so-called "original pinner," insisting that if other people grabbed the photo, Nikken EU could too. She claimed to be "unaware of any copyright restrictions related to the use of this photo..." Further, she advised that Nikken EU "strongly deny any copyright infringement and recommend that you contact the person who first posted the photo and availed it to all Pinterest users."

Pinterest News Roundup

A lively discussion on the Etsy forum, spanning at least 25 pages in two days, was spurred by the following opening post by an Etsy seller, after receiving a "strike":

What the heck??? I pinned an image from a blog I follow. It was not the person's website. How on earth would I have known that the person didn't want their stuff pinned? This really stinks.... I don't care about the pin, I care about getting cyber-slapped for something that Pinterest encourages - PINNING!!!

Further down in the thread, she write:

If she didn't want me to pin the image at all, why didn't she just send me a message thru Pinterest right then and there and tell me to delete the pin???

...which is a fairly typical demand for courtesy from copyright infringers that lack the courtesy of asking for permission, and do not realize how much time they are costing content creators in chasing their content.

It is interesting to note that many pinners in that thread report having had "strikes" and some pins deleted. Etsy pinners are by no means a random sample, but if so many pinners have pins removed, one might be led to believe that Pinterest handles MASSIVE amounts of DMCA take-downs.

Photog Gets Into Nasty Tussle With Radio Station Over Copyright Infringement outlines a case where a photograph was used without permission, and is followed by some fascinating comments.

In Why can't we use Google images on our website?, a webmaster requests the help of a consumer advocate after receiving a demand from Getty Images. The comment section is very lively here, too.

While not about images, AP wins big: Why a court said clipping content is not fair use reports on a recent judgement imposing fair use limits on the written word, in this case, snippets from news articles.

Now We Know Who Trolled Who

Back in August, Creators Against Pinterest published Will The Real Troll Please Stand Up, an account of what can happen to content creators that attempt to protect their intellectual property through the legal channels, with parallels to potential lawsuits against pinners. This particular story concerned poet Linda Ellis whose poem The Dash was infringed upon by one April Brown, who found oil for her fire on the website extortionletterinfo.com, operated by Matthew Chan. The website, and affiliate websites, posted derogatory, "photoshopped" pictures of Ellis and devoted an entire subforum to deride and mock her.

A Georgia Judge has decided that the real troll was Matthew Chan and imposed a restraining order as follows:

The Respondent has knowingly and willfully violated O.C.G.A. §§ 16-5-90 et seq. and placed the Petitioner in reasonable fear for the Petitioner’s safety, because Respondent contacted the Petitioner (and urged others to contact Petitioner) and posted personal information of the Petitioner for the purpose of harassing and intimidating Petitioner (1.) As the owner and operator of the site, Respondent has the ability to remove posts in his capacity as the moderator. However, Respondent chose not to remove posts that were personally directed at Ms. Ellis and would cause a reasonable person to fear for her safety. Because the Respondent’s course of conduct was directed at Ms. Ellis through the posted messages and information relating to Ms. Ellis, and the conduct was intended (and in fact did) create fear and intimidation of the Petitioner, Respondent is hereby ORDERED to remove all posts relating to Ms. Ellis.

According to Linda Ellis' blog, Chan

boasted about driving around near my subdivision in a forum with a photo of my home and my address. He posted threats about he and others driving around my neighborhood with video cameras, threats that I was “dead,” threats that he was speaking with people who want to “put me in the ground.” He posted my personal information and records. He called my employee’s home. He posted videos in which he yelled obscenities directed toward me, loudly screaming: “Linda, you’re a piece of __it!” adding that I “won’t understand anything but BRUTE FORCE!”

Following the judgment, Chan has cleaned up the forum of everything Linda Ellis and seems to have reduced himself to mere veiled insider innuendos.

Perhaps, just like we have "innocent infringers," we have "innocent stalkers." In a spectacular example of not-knowing-when-to-let-go, April Brown responded to the judgment with a press release stauchly defending Chan's actions.

Aiding Copyright Infringement

According to Tim Hull of Courthouse News Service in: No Reprieve for isoHunt in Copyright-Aiding Suit, the 9th Circuit Court ruled this week that the owner of the popular BitTorrent search engine isoHunt.com is liable for contributory copyright infringement.

The owner of isoHunt.com had appealed a ruling from a lawsuit filed in 2006 by several major motion picture companies, and has now lost.

This is a good sign that litigation against Pinterest could result in a victory for the plaintiffs, since, in my opinion, the Pinterest case is even more clear-cut than in the case of isoHunt.com - inasmuch as they are patient with the slow turning of the wheels of Justice.

'I Hate Pinterest' Some More

Photographer Molly Cranna:

...i hate that it perpetuates the regression of women back into the kitchen, back into decorating their homes, back into diy projects, back to the worst kind of basics.

In Sorta Crunchy, Megan is nostalgic about the pre-Pinterest days, and considers its effect on blogs. A visitor comments:

Damn it all to hell, I hate Pinterest for what it's done to blogging.

I hate that I got sucked into it.

I hate that even if I step back, the tidal wave will just keep going. That feels so...empty. Discouraging. Less heartfelt.

Megan replies:

I know that for me, Pinterest made me feel like this blog could be and should be something that's it never going to be. I don't wear pinnable outfits, I don't make pinnable recipes, I don't write pinnable tutorials. I actually love to use Pinterest and use it often as a resource, but trying to shift and morph into a consistently pinnable blog? Yep. Empty. Exactly.[...]And I hope I didn't come across as overly critical of Pinterest-driven blogging. I enjoy Pinterest and use it a lot! I've just come to a place of being honest with myself that it's not in my DNA to be able to churn out that kind of content.

Thetamom is another Pinterest casualty.

I fear that blogging, the real blogging that I have grown to know and love is slowly becoming eaten up in a world of self-promotion, filled with Instagram and Pinterest-inspired users. People want the visual, they want what’s quick and easy...

A visitor to the Zeebra Designs & Destinations blog writes:

If it’s on the internet and it’s free, you’re the product, not the customer. [...])

[...]Many people who talk about “curating content on the web” believe the old saw about “if it’s on the web, it’s there for the taking”. There are makers and takers, in every walk of life.

K. Snodgrass bemoans thow Pinterest craft envy erodes her self-esteem::

I hate pinterest with a passion and I don't even use it. I just know all about all of the great ideas in the whole world that I will NEVER have energy or desire to complete.It seems like wherever I go now, people have to tell about the thing they just did or saw on Pintrest. Or what they accomplished and posted to pinterest.

Quickie News Roundup

Heather Simone writes, in 'The Pinterest Trap':

I'm tempted to start going through my pins, going to the site the picture/craft is on, and bookmarking them through Delicious instead. Seems like a safer bet to me.

It's always nice to know that there are people out there that "get it."

In an unrelated, ironic twist, someone on the print-on-demand site REDBUBBLE sells an iPad case with the Pinterest pin design.

In Lawsuit Alleges That Early Pinterest Investor Stole The Idea, Pinterest Says Suit Is ‘Baseless’, Anthony Ha of Techcrunch reports that one Theodore F. Schroeder claims that Pinterest investor Brian S. Cohen stole his ideas. Whether this suit will get anywhere is debatable, but seeing Pinterest embroiled in an Intellectual Property lawsuit should bring in a chuckle or two.

According to a commentator:

I would say that being copied by another contemporary business entity is one thing, but having one of your founders/investors/employees/insiders feeding your inside info to a competitor, is something else, and def. worthy of a lawsuit.

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Today's best read comes from the University of Richmond's Journal of Law and Technology, and written by Stephanie Chau: A “Pinteresting” Question: Is Pinterest Here to Stay? A Study in How IP Can Help Pinterest Lead a Revolution".

Social networking sites flourish in the face of a narcissistic society. [...] unbridled self-indulgence and self-expression grew into “a more extraverted, shallow, and materialistic form of narcissism. [...] A vicious cycle ensues whereby these sites reinforce narcissistic behavior by rewarding the user with more connections or comments, and as those narcissists connect with other narcissists, the behavior mushrooms quid pro quo.

There is a lengthy discussion of legal concerns, including that attribution doesn't matter:

However, courts’ current fair use analyses are blind to the copyright holder’s involvement as well as attribution by the infringer,

This is particularly important:

A new inducement doctrine may be more helpful. In MGM Studios Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd., the Court held that “one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties.”[82] Given that Pinterest does not ask users to consider permissions before each pin, its business model is distinguishable from that of Facebook. Moreover, Facebook encourages sharing personal experiences and photos whereas Pinterest encourages sharing content created by others. Just as Grokster distributed free software that allowed users to share electronic files through peer-to-peer networks, Pinterest provides an interface for users to freely share images.[83] Although there are provisions protecting the online service provider (“OSP”),[84] Pinterest must tread carefully to avoid crossing the inducement threshold.

In favor of copyright holders pursuing legal action against pinners, the following is noted:

If a Pinterest user loses a case against a copyright holder, the floodgates will open for other copyright holders to pursue similar claims. Disgruntled copyright holders will feel betrayed by the company. Users may eschew the system. It will take a complete restructuring of the core business for Pinterest to recover. Timing compounds the pressure on Yang. If a court rules before Pinterest can monetize, Pinterest may lose the opportunity to capitalize on the network it so famously achieved in the last two years.

The article is quite good at fairly presenting all permutations of events that can happen with Pinterest, good or bad, but the tonen is quite sycophantic. Still, great read.

Unschooled

Elaine Tham has a really lovely blog, which today I take as an example of the copyright pitfalls that Pinterest is promoting. Elaine has used a picture "found on Pinterest" and slighly modified it by overlaying a Bible verse. Like a lot of people unschooled in copyright, she takes the image, and forces the copyright owner to seek her out for credit or a take down, like photographers have nothing better to do with their time. Ironically, this person seems to be keen on doing the "right thing;" unfortunately, she doesn't know what the right thing is.

God comes first. I wanna do what's right, what FEELS right.
[...]
P.S. The background image was saved via Pinterest and the photographer's name was not known. I have no intention on copyright infringement, but if the owner wishes for the credits to be included or the image to be taken down, please write to me in the Comments section!

...and we're back.

I did take a short hiatus from the blog to concentrate on other projects.

I'm now equipped with a giant, state-of-the-art screen to better find copyright infringement on Pinterest. A second reason is that PhotoShop is a screen space hog but that was only a minor consideration in my purchase.

Pinterest has undergone a few changes, such as something akin to the "@" function in Twitter, and pinners who have lost the ability to pin from my websites, sure make up for it by pinning my material from Yahoo and Google searches.

But more importantly, I have come across Arlee Barr's deliciously subversive Pinterest account and her staunchly anti-Pinterest views. She's a fantastic textile and embroidery artist.

Did you know that Google will more likely point you to a pin of your work than to your own website???? So much for “Promotion”.

Thank You, Elizabeth Warren

In Worries Over Copyright Infringement Kept Warren's Senate Campaign Off Pinterest, Sarah Lai Stirland reports:

Senator-elect Elizabeth Warren's 2012 campaign stayed away from the social image-sharing platform Pinterest because the campaign's new media director feared that the platform could be shut down by copyright infringement claims.

Pinterest Clones Continue To Propagate

A webmaster forum advertises a program that allows anyone to have their own pinterest clone.

As it turns out, Pinterest's site is easy as pie to code. Everyone is doing it.

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

Pinterest now has "business accounts." As far as I can tell, the only difference is that you can have a link to your business in your profile. However, once an account holder ceases to be an individual account, and becomes associated with business interest (even a small business), copyright holders might be much bolder with the lawsuits. They may expect to be suing deeper pockets, and fewer excuses.

Removing Content From Loveit.com

Loveit.com does not at this time have an online DMCA complaint form, nor does it have any publicly accessible information available on how to have material removed, and who to lodge a complaint with.

After some sleuthing, below are the email addresses of the people you need to contact at Amazon's cloud service:

neteng-edge@amazon.com
robertke@amazon.com
tysonl@amazon.com

With these, you'll get through.

Now, for formatting:

Hi,

Please remove these images from your servers:
http://xxxxx.cloudfront.net/size_578xH/xxxxx
http://xxxxx.cloudfront.net/size_220xH/xxxxx

And all associated versions that you keep in other sizes.

These images are displayed here:
http://loveit.com/loves/xxxxx

They are from my website:
http://mywebsite.com/mywebpage.html

I state UNDER PENALTY OF PERJURY that:

I have a good faith belief that the disputed use of the copyrighted material is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law (e.g., as a fair use).

I am the owner, or authorized to act on behalf of the owner, of the copyright or of an exclusive right under the copyright that is allegedly infringed.

This information is accurate.

WRITE in your name

NOTE: I have found so far images are in two formats:
http://xxxxx.cloudfront.net/size_578xH/xxxxx
http://xxxxx.cloudfront.net/size_220xH/xxxxx

Make sure to mention both these formats in your take-down notice.

Required Anti-Pinterest Reading

From photographer Jason M. Hogle:

Thus by promoting and participating in copyright infringement, Pinterest lays claim to the intellectual property of others such that they can make money with it if they so choose, all of which is based on assuming its users have the rights they are transferring to Pinterest when they post content. That is, when they post someone else’s content, which represents the vast majority of the images shown on the site.

READ the whole article

From AMD Law Group:

Although many Pinterest users do not claim to own any of the images that they publish, it is still copyright infringement to not seek permission from the content’s creators. It’s copyright infringement even if you do link back to the original creator’s site or credit them. Unless you seek permission before you share someone else’s image, you violate the right of content holders to exclusively redistribute their material.