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

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?

Worthwhile Reads

The Pinterest (Er, Tumblr) Problem, Fair Use, and a Suggestion for Change from Joe Ross.

But the problem [...] is that the “Pinterest problem” is absolutely not on a scale never before seen. This is, in fact, how the internet works. The compliance with the DMCA and solid indemnification clauses keep companies out of hot copyright water, but users are infringing at an astounding daily rate.

Pinterest and Copyright Infringements from the Beckwith Mansion & Estate Blog.

[...] when people ask, “Are you on Pinterest?” I tell them I am not and that I don’t believe in supporting copyright infringements.

A Word From Gary Larson

Gary Larson does not want his comics to be redistributed on the internet.

My effort here is to try and speak to the intangible impact, the emotional cost to me, personally, of seeing my work collected, digitized, and offered up in cyberspace beyond my control. [...]

So, in a nutshell (probably an unfortunate choice of words for me), I only ask that this respect be returned, and the way for anyone to do that is to please, please refrain from putting The Far Side out on the Internet. These cartoons are my "children," of sorts, and like a parent, I'm concerned about where they go at night without telling me. And, seeing them at someone's web site is like getting the call at 2:00 a.m. that goes, "Uh, Dad, you're not going to like this much, but guess where I am."[...]

Please send my "kids" home. I'll be eternally grateful.

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.

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.

Pinterest Sputters

Pin hags are getting bored of red velvet shit.
After a meteoric rise, and subsequent leveling off of traffic, Pinterest's 2013 second quarter appears to demonstrate that stealing images from artists, photographers and bloggers gets old after a while. One can always hope that Pinterest will myspace itself.

Let's take a closer look at the last 3 months:


Pinterest is trending down, artists hopeful
While it's reasonable to expect traffic downturns during the summer months while pin hags are out gardening, this downturn does appear more pronounced and sustained than it was at the corresponding time last year.

What factors might contribute to this excellent downturn?

• It takes a few months for pin hags to realize how futile their picture collections are.
• Bing, Yahoo and Google Image searches now show full-size images without having to visit source websites, competing with Pinterest's highly successful business model of shamelessly grabbing other people's pictorial content by way of crowdscraping.
• Even spammers are beginning to realize that Pinterest referral traffic is just a worthless trickle.
• All the pictures have already been pinned, so Pinterest is degenerating into an incestuous orgy of monotonous re-pinning.
• Maybe the "strikes" are working a slow grind?

Pinterest is not going down without a fight.

• The image displays are even bigger!
• Analytic features for overtly commercial boards, so that their owners get to see in charts and numbers how completely useless Pinterest referral traffic really is!
• Hassling the content providers: DMCA take-down requests are more error-prone than ever with the "strike system" radio buttons popup text interfering with the use of the buttons, glitches like the button that is clicked causing the button in the following entry field to unclick, error messages that wipe out the check-marks and pull-down selection menus, DMCA confirmation letters that do not list the images that have been taken down (if they have been taken down).

If Pinterest flouders, how about crowdscraping the written word, next?

Fellow Artist, I Feel Your Pain

They Stole My Art

You are not alone.

Pinterest Still Lacks Common Courtesy

Pinterest still lacks the most basic courtesy towards the people whose content it enables its users to infringe over and over.

When a pinner is coddled with a lengthy, grovelling, apologetic letter from Pinterest following a DMCA take-down request, Pinterest inludes the URL of the image that was taken down. Maybe to help the pinners upload the picture to their computers directly! God forbid a pinner should lose HER precious image!

I, on the other hand, after filing a DMCA take down notice, Pinterest just sends me a terse reply without any record or confirmation of the images that are taken down. There is no apology, either.

It seems that their whole business model is adding insult to injury.

Copyright Infringement Becomes Too Burdensome

In Cindy Schnackel's RedBubble blog entry Big Changes, the artist explains how rampant copyright infringement is affecting the way she publishes her work on the internet:

One of the biggest changes[...] is to cease selling many, (or any), reprints on Red Bubble.

[...]Changes to search engines give away images instead of drive traffic to us now. Social and sharing sites have become infringement cesspools. Scraper sites link our work to porn and ads and hide behind secretive web hosts.

How has Pinterest and search engines displaying full-size images instead of just thumbnails affected the way you publish your work on the internet?

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."

Photographer Against Pinterest

In About Pinterest: An open letter to my readers, photographer Tara Bradford writes:

[...] I don't want even one of my photos on Pinterest.[...]

I am trying to prevent my original work from losing its value by being pinned (and uncredited) numerous times on multiple Pinterest boards, amidst groupings of dubious quality and origin. Pinterest is a big company with massive funding and I am one small business owner, simply trying to protect my livelihood. I receive no benefit whatsoever from my photography appearing on Pinterest.

For other posts from Tara about Pinterest, read:

Picture This, Pinterest

Has It Come To This?

The continuing saga of keeping photos off Pinterest - this article mentions a pinner that knowingly posts Tara's photographs knowing full well this is against her will.

Still No Self-Promotion

Pinterest's early TOS and user etiquette had some firm language warning against "self-promotion" - setting the tone of the "pinned" images never to belong to the pinners. If a pinner can only "promote" other people's images, by definition they do own the copyright to them.

Pinterest has a new feature where they "verify" your website, which on the surface sounds like it could be a way to legitimize and set paramaters for self-promotion and posting one's own images.

Accounts with a verified website have confirmed ownership of their website using our automatic verification process. Website verification establishes the link between a website and a Pinterest account.

These accounts are marked with a checkmark which displays next to their website on their profile page and below their name in search results.

However, this seem not to be the case at all: In Do NOT to verify your website in Pinterest - Read my story. the below was reported:

This was a big mistake: very short time after I verified my website in Pinterest, my account got deactivated. There was no warning from Pinterest and no specific reason.

They've just suddenly decided that I was a spammer. I believe that they've noticed that most of my pins are linked to my website and they didn't like it so they kicked me out.

But here is the big issue: Because of the association between my website and my account - my website got banned from Pinterest as well.