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.

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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.

Facebook Backs Off on Want It Button

The article: Unpinned: Facebook Shuts Down Test Of Its Pinterest-Style Collections Feature reports that the experimental "Pinterest-like" Facebook gadgets have already vanished from Facebook.

That's too bad, because Facebook's plan was one that shunned copyright infringement, partnering instead with some companies that gave permission before their images were used in the user's "Collections."

The experiment was a flop.

This is interesting because many commercial outlets are trying to get their foot in Pinterest's door and some may be succeeding to some degree, like the Martha Stewart Living Pinterest page. It truly drives the point home that people love to infringe on copyright of artists to fill their image hoards much more than they do commercial images with implied permission.

This reinforces the notion that Pinterest owes its success to the unabashed copyright infringement that it facilitates, and that it probably wouldn't have gotten anywhere without it.

ShopInterest.co

ShopInterest.Co is a new Pinterest clone startup. The variety of ways webmasters try to hitch their wagons to the Pinterest horse is comedy gold.

Here's how it works. I pin stuff on Pinterest. Then I sign up with ShopInterest.Co, who will upload any pin or pinboard to its own set of servers. I add price tags to my pins, et voilà! ShopInterest.Co has made a copy of my pinboards, except that I can now sell what I have pinned. I plug my state tax rate, connect with my PayPal account, and when someone wants to buy whatever is pinned, I ship it.

...our user base expressed an interest is leveraging Pinterest for selling, and shared with us that there was a lot of duplicative work between selling via Etsy, Ebay and posting in Pinterest

These geniuses have probably heard a lot of uncritical Pinterest hype from the self-appointed Pinterest marketing gurus, but it appears that they haven't bothered to check out Pinterest with their own eyes.

How does a pinboard full of images taken without permission, representing objects pinners can't afford, translates into something the pin hags have the power to sell? Remember, Pinterest frowns upon self-promotion, so how can pinners package and ship other people's things... especially when most of these things are just pretty pictures of objects that aren't for sale?

..it’s not about building a traditional online store – it’s about turning your Pinterest board into a store.

Good luck with that.

Oh Boy...

Sex.com, the most expensive domain name ever purchased at 13 million dollars back in November 2010, has switched to a Pinterest format.

They're not the first to bring "pinning" to adult material; sex.com is merely stepping where "snatchly" and "pinclub" have already threaded.

It's only a matter of time before the litigious photo agency "Perfect 10" takes these websites to court. This inevitable event should be in everyone's crystal ball.

Awareness, Action!

If you have a Pinterest account, and have a few minutes, do REPIN from http://pinterest.com/pinhammer - maximize the number of pinners that get to see these graphic copyright messages in the general feed.

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.

Love the Art, Hate the Artist

Love the Art, Hate the Artist

Available here through Creative Commons.

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?

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.