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.

Image Copyright Is A Lesser Copyright

Plagiarism of the written word is sometimes taken more seriously
than image plagiarism.

I think photographers, artists, and other intellectual property copyright owners need to catch up with this trend as well. Whether for good or ill, the internet has become a place for sharing and the free exchange of ideas. [...]With sites like Pinterest, many artists and photographers and other relatively unknown sites are getting great exposure. And isn't that the goal of an artist--to have his or her work appreciated and admired?

- "Cocopreme" in How To Use Pinterest Legally

Obviously there is a line and some people do cross it. I've had my articles copied word for word on other sites before and had to report it.

- "Cocopreme" in How To Use Pinterest Legally

I think writers need to catch up with this trend as well. Whether for good or ill, the internet has become a place for sharing and the free exchange of ideas. With sites like Tumblr, many writers and other relatively unknown sites are getting great exposure. And isn't that the goal of a writer--to have his or her work appreciated and admired?

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and outright copying is just sharing free ideas.

What appears like a reasonable opinion about images sounds outrageous when applied to the written word, doesn't it?

And Now For The Lawsuits

While lawsuits are expected to sprout in order to stem the unprecedented increase of copyright infringement facilated by Pinterest and its clones, the first one has come from an unexpected source.

Perfect 10, a company selling nude model photographs, has launched a lawsuit against Tumblr for failure to respond to DMCA notices. It's likely that Tumblr will respond by taking the content down, and pretending it didn't receive the notices, or that the notices were incorrectly formulated.

There is, however, only so much that can be hidden under the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA.

Can you provide your users with a one-click copyright-infringement tool (the pinmarklet), and still hide behind the safe harbor?

Can you receive thousands of DMCA take-down notices from a single user, without being pro-active, and still hide being the safe harbor?

Can the mother of the co-founder have 15,000 possibly infringing images, and still hide being the safe harbor?

Can you keep accepting pins from Google Images (by definition, nearly all should be infringing), and still hide behind the safe harbor?

Can you force copyright holders to chase every pin, when they could more easily report the one image the pins and repins are associated with, and still hide behind the safe harbor?

The courts will have to settle the matter.