What is Pinterest?
"It's a site made by a secret cabal of advertising executives to get women to advertise products and the overall consumer lifestyle to each other."
- reverendfrag4 on Reddit
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Boycott The Nopin Meta-Tag
Should the nopin meta-tag be boycotted outright?
After a webmaster installs the nopin meta-tag to every single one of their pages, pinners are supposed to see this message when attempting to pin:
"This site doesn't allow pinning to Pinterest. Please contact the owner with any questions. Thanks for visiting!"PROS: The no-pin tag may reduce the amount of copyright infringement on your material. It doesn't prevent pinning.
CONS:
According to attorney Alicia Wagner Calzada, "The concept of copyright falls apart if you require the copyright holder to opt out of every potential user who had developed an opt out policy."
Creators have no control over the message that pinners see. This is unusual. If a webmaster wants to disable right-clicks (as ineffective against infringement as the nopin tag), they get to choose the message they want to send. Those are the creator's visitors, visiting his website. Why does Pinterest grab control of the message away from the creator? Pinterest's entire business model revolves around grabbing things. The message Pinterest imposes entreats visitors to harangue the creators about their decision to enforce their copyright: "Please contact the owner with any questions." If the use of this tag becomes widespread, it creates a dangerous precedent that copyright enforcement ought to be actively defensive, rather than automatic as it is now. Not every creator has the web savvy to implement this. It is dangerous if we start to create the impression that creators that haven't implemented the code are tacitly implying that it's OK to hand their content over to Pinterest by way "letting their content be pinned." Unless you have dynamic pages, this code can be an enormous time drain to implement. Creators should actively opt into being pinned, if that's what they want. To use this tag is to accept the arrogant notion of a default state that all graphical content can be grabbed from its creators, unless actively overruled.
Some Definitions
NEW WORDS:
Pinnosphere: The collective of all the user-uploaded images on the internet, largely without consent of the creators/authors/photographers, for the purposes of image consumption on pinsites.
Pinsite: A website where users are encouraged to scrape third-party content for display and viewing on said website.
Image Consumption: The act of viewing an image as an end in itself, for inspiration, collection, or simple enjoyment.
Pinnosphere: The collective of all the user-uploaded images on the internet, largely without consent of the creators/authors/photographers, for the purposes of image consumption on pinsites.
Pinsite: A website where users are encouraged to scrape third-party content for display and viewing on said website.
Image Consumption: The act of viewing an image as an end in itself, for inspiration, collection, or simple enjoyment.
Pinterest vs. 4chan and Censorship
4chan.org/b/ is an image sharing website that has been in operation for far longer than Pinterest; it dates back 2003. Let's see how it fares against the newer Pinterest.
Except for Furries, which are a disgrace, 4chan beats Pinterest fair and square.
These two websites collide on the Pinterest page showing pins from /b/. Of course, "pinners" pin images from other image-sharing websites such as 4chan. Today, there are only 4 pictures listed; a few days ago, there were hundreds. The small number of pins from 4chan does ruin this post's joke - but where have all the pictures gone?
Is Pinterest censoring 4chan as an image source?
Is Pinterest censoring images from 4chan? If Pinterest can monitor images pinned from a website, and choose to delete these images on their own volition, why can't they "censor" a website by request of its webmaster?
One wonders.
| 4chan/b/ | ||
| Founder |  The handsome Christopher Poole |
 Ben Silbermann not much to look at |
| Breasts | Females greeted with "Tits of Get The *F* Out" | Mastectomy pictures hugely popular |
| DMCA procedure | Images rarely stay on the servers for more than an hour | Infuriating take down form on website requires entering individual pin pages rather than sweeping a whole pin/repin cluster with an image location. |
| Cuddlies | Furries, Pedobear | Crocheted teddy bears |
| Reigning monarch | Boxxy | Jane Wang, Ben Silbermann's mother |
| Privacy | Absolute. Unless you have nude pictures of yourself that can be matched with your Facebook account | None. User accounts are linked to Facebook, real names are the norm. |
| Trolls |  |
 |
Except for Furries, which are a disgrace, 4chan beats Pinterest fair and square.
These two websites collide on the Pinterest page showing pins from /b/. Of course, "pinners" pin images from other image-sharing websites such as 4chan. Today, there are only 4 pictures listed; a few days ago, there were hundreds. The small number of pins from 4chan does ruin this post's joke - but where have all the pictures gone?
Is Pinterest censoring 4chan as an image source?
Is Pinterest censoring images from 4chan? If Pinterest can monitor images pinned from a website, and choose to delete these images on their own volition, why can't they "censor" a website by request of its webmaster?
One wonders.
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Oh, How Disinteresting!
Back to January 1 levels, and flatlining at last.
Many reasons for this decline might be theorized.
Fear of the Terms of Use. People realizing copyright infringement isn't so cool. More creators asking to have their content removed drives the point home. Boredom sets in from seeing the same pictures over and over. Lack of intellectual stimulation - comments are dumber than those on Youtube. Easy ramping up of followers may be exciting at first, but feel hollow when users realize how little it means. The painful realization that we can't afford the things we love. The painful realization that we don't have the time or skill to make these crafts. Collection of LOLcats seems a little silly after reading this blog. What becomes popular appears random. Spammers finding out the traffic doesn't pan out, or Pinterest slowing them down with barriers. Pinners turned off by spammers. An increase in spamming hides a ever greater decline in actual use. Hating Pinterest is trendier than liking it.
What is so special about Omaha?
The Greater Omaha area has under a million inhabitants. Why is it so clearly over-represented among Pinterest visitors? Nebraska's greatest tourist attraction is its aquifer, so a good guess would be "nothing better to do."
Collected Messages From Pinners
We're just sharing images we care about - creators can suck it up
"Yah, Good luck collecting damages" - Difficulty in collecting damages means that copyrights may be infringed with impunity.
"people hate free advertising....RIIIGGGHGHTT!" - You are forgiven for not knowing the varied ways one may profit from their images and not care for that kind of publicity.
"If you don’t want your work seen don’t make art. I would think an artist should know that it is meant to be shared." - Art is a special profession where one is expected to work without remuneration, unlike dentists and hairdressers.
"I'm just waiting for the day every single person on pinterest gets sued." - This one is sarcasm, the author has over 600 pins. Pending 8 million lawsuits, the laws will continue to be flaunted.
"Do you have a website? If you do you should consider deleting it because people can steal your image too." - Offering the solution is to remove all images from the web (unless it's products for sale, I suppose).
"I think people have too high an opinion of the actual value of their talent or work. People pinning images are by and large providing free advertising. Stop bitching already." - The images aren't that good to begin with, be grateful for the exposure, shut up.
"...the main task of most any artist is becoming known. Pinterest and all those crazed pinners out there ARE WORKING FOR YOU in this regard." - Fame is your reward, pinners are your friends.
"Most people’s websites I look at don’t have ANY sort of watermark or protection and they are the first to complain when someone steals it! It’s like laying a dollar down on the street and then suing someone for stealing when they pick it up! UGH!!! Protect yourself and go back to the work of creating!" - Watermarks will stop the infringement! Get back and work on more stuff for us to pin.
"Sharing is caring - If you don't want your content to be seen just don't publish it. Every pin on Pinterest is an undeniable sign of appreciation for your work, so be proud of it instead of being mad at these people!" - Sharing is good, caring is good. How can one argue against apple pie? This is one of many who doesn't understand that money is made by distributing one's work, even for free (with revenues from advertising). Distributing other people's content is taking away their right to profit from its distribution, it's "sharing" what you don't own. Again, the oft-repeated suggestion to just stop publishing images, while grabbing said images for Pinterest's profit and of course, "caring."
Fair use is claimed for re-posting these comments. After all, they were put on the internet for the taking, and are tremendous publicity. No watermarks were found anywhere.
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Mothership Spam Is Our Friend
Welcome to Pintensify, the spam mother ship.
Will Pinterest be dominated?
The swarm gathers steam and spam automation tools in the dark confines of Black Hat World forum. "Black Hat" refers to a web savvy crowd whose goal is to exploit the internet and search engines to their fullest extent, no holds barred, with every means at their disposal. They are the finders of loopholes. They are the hackers. Mostly, it's legal. There is a lot of buzz about Pinterest right now.
Many Black Hat World threads seek ways to mine Pinterest
Bugs are being worked out; how to cloak redirects, monetizing through CPA (cost-per-action) affiliate marketing, Amazon, diet scams, fake gift cards, pages serving pay-per-click advertising. They work in informal teams harvesting image libraries, programming bots, dealing in followers and invites, creating and selling Pinterest clone programs. Small spammers even complain about the larger spammers "ruining it for everyone."
Like the artists whose websites are being copied onto Pinterest by pinners, spammers are trying to evaluate the worth of Pinterest traffic. Unlike artists, these guys count their coins and keep statistics.
Black hat webmasters trying to market Pinterest-spamming bots are of course lauding it as "highly converting traffic," a.k.a. cash-in-the-bank for a spammer. Very few report high earnings "making a steady $300-400 from Pinterest" (a feat that appears to require about 20 thousand followers and thousands of accounts), they are outnumbered by skeptics:
The swarm gathers steam and spam automation tools in the dark confines of Black Hat World forum. "Black Hat" refers to a web savvy crowd whose goal is to exploit the internet and search engines to their fullest extent, no holds barred, with every means at their disposal. They are the finders of loopholes. They are the hackers. Mostly, it's legal. There is a lot of buzz about Pinterest right now.
Bugs are being worked out; how to cloak redirects, monetizing through CPA (cost-per-action) affiliate marketing, Amazon, diet scams, fake gift cards, pages serving pay-per-click advertising. They work in informal teams harvesting image libraries, programming bots, dealing in followers and invites, creating and selling Pinterest clone programs. Small spammers even complain about the larger spammers "ruining it for everyone."
Like the artists whose websites are being copied onto Pinterest by pinners, spammers are trying to evaluate the worth of Pinterest traffic. Unlike artists, these guys count their coins and keep statistics.
Black hat webmasters trying to market Pinterest-spamming bots are of course lauding it as "highly converting traffic," a.k.a. cash-in-the-bank for a spammer. Very few report high earnings "making a steady $300-400 from Pinterest" (a feat that appears to require about 20 thousand followers and thousands of accounts), they are outnumbered by skeptics:
=======================================
"I've dabbled in this and I still don't get it. The clickthrough rate is horrible."
=======================================
"i found pinterest requried too much work compared to other methods...i have no interest in spending tons of valuable time trying to make a hundred bucks/mo...i could make more at mcdonalds."
=======================================
April Total earning
Ad.sense Earnings: €62.83 = $82
Amazon Earnings: $6.01
CPA Earnings: $40.20
TOTAL: $128.21
Number of accounts: 74
Total followers: 1165
Total following: 1483
=======================================For many artists and photographers, thousands of pins result in negligible traffic. How much is this negligible traffic really worth? The spammer jury is still out.
"i am getting a decent amount of daily traffic from pinterest but not making much money. getting cpa offer conversions from pinterest traffic is not doing too well for me but i know a lot of money can be made from the site."
Monday, May 7, 2012
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.
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.
The courts will have to settle the matter.
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?
"No Copyright Infringement Intended"
I do not own any portion of any photos pinned or described, it belongs to its rightful owners. No copyright infringement intended.
Googling site:pinterest.com "no copyright infringement intended" yields 530,000 results. This means that more than half a million "pinners" believe that this disclaimer protects them from claims of copyright infringement, as the infringement was not intended.
Not to compare copyright infringement with violent crimes, but this is like going into a bank with a gun and a nylon stocking over one's head, demanding money from the cashier, and shouting: "I don't intend to rob this bank! I don't mean to steal this money!"
Looking at the context of this bizarre disclaimer, one can see that it underlies a complete lack of understanding of what copyright infringement is. Some write: "posted for inspiration only; no copyright infringement intended" as if a claiming a non-commercial purpose makes infringement more tolerable.
Some will even boldly acknowledge that they are infringing, followed by the disclaimer "I do not own any portion of any photos pinned or described, it belongs to its rightful owners. No copyright infringement intended." They KNOW that they are infringing copyrights, and they're worried about it enough to draw attention to it - but they want us to believe it was unintentional, and that makes it OK.
Electronic Content Curation
Below is a fine example of what some would refer to as "curated content":
A collection of LOLcats on Pinterest
To the credit of the person having mindless fun putting these together, s/he probably never heard of "electronic content curation." Yet, that's exactly what some would like to call it.
Well worth reading is Matt Langer's blog, Stop Calling It Curation, where he exposes this new fad word for what it is: nonsense. "First, let’s just get clear on the terminology here: “Curation” is an act performed by people with PhDs in art history; the business in which we’re all engaged when we’re tossing links around on the internet is simple “sharing.” " I'm loathe to find a favorite quote in this brilliantly funny and honest article, you are urged to read the entire page.
We also have Frederic Martinet's Curation - It's Shit who eviscerates, toilet plunger in hand, "curation platforms," copyright infringement, economic freeloading, irresponsibility and the drowning of information. He writes: "Curation is the taking content from one place and putting it in another. Nothing else. Let’s remember this now – taking content without having permission to do so is an infringement of copyright." and perhaps more importantly: "Some curation platforms offer the “share” functionality for redistribution on various social networks by linking to the curation platform hosting the content rather than to the original article. It is therefore a harnessing of potential traffic and, as a result, economic freeloading." Indeed, we see an infuriating increase in Pinterest itself being offered as the original source of some material.
LOLcats are representative of the heritage of our civilization, their pixels must be preserved for future archeologists to understand us fully. This is one for the Smithsonian, to be sure!
A collection of LOLcats on Pinterest
To the credit of the person having mindless fun putting these together, s/he probably never heard of "electronic content curation." Yet, that's exactly what some would like to call it.
Well worth reading is Matt Langer's blog, Stop Calling It Curation, where he exposes this new fad word for what it is: nonsense. "First, let’s just get clear on the terminology here: “Curation” is an act performed by people with PhDs in art history; the business in which we’re all engaged when we’re tossing links around on the internet is simple “sharing.” " I'm loathe to find a favorite quote in this brilliantly funny and honest article, you are urged to read the entire page.
We also have Frederic Martinet's Curation - It's Shit who eviscerates, toilet plunger in hand, "curation platforms," copyright infringement, economic freeloading, irresponsibility and the drowning of information. He writes: "Curation is the taking content from one place and putting it in another. Nothing else. Let’s remember this now – taking content without having permission to do so is an infringement of copyright." and perhaps more importantly: "Some curation platforms offer the “share” functionality for redistribution on various social networks by linking to the curation platform hosting the content rather than to the original article. It is therefore a harnessing of potential traffic and, as a result, economic freeloading." Indeed, we see an infuriating increase in Pinterest itself being offered as the original source of some material.
LOLcats are representative of the heritage of our civilization, their pixels must be preserved for future archeologists to understand us fully. This is one for the Smithsonian, to be sure!
Sunday, May 6, 2012
How Can The Pinnosphere Hurt Artists?
The pinnosphere is the aggregate of all the images that have been uploaded by users on copyright-infringement platforms such as Pinterest.
Potential website visitors have a finite amount of time available for exploring the internet; viewership is therefore a finite resource that webmasters compete for. They compete for this commodity (visitor traffic) in order to display advertisement, or make sales of products. The larger the size of the web, the smaller the amount of time spent per website, on average.
Copyright-infringement platforms increase the size of the web by multiplying the number of pages where content can be viewed, even if this content is often repeated (multiple original pins from source, pins from search engine result pages, repins, repins of repins). In the aggregate, this swelling of content reduces the amount of time people spend on the source websites.
When website visitors spend more of their finite internet viewing time on Pinterest, they spend less time on the source websites as well.
Further, the source websites have to compete with their own infringed images in the pinnosphere (some creators may have more images in the pinnosphere than on their own websites) - with the added attraction of everyone else's best work, and the users getting their egos flattered with comments and followers for their great "picks" while the originators themselves lose both traffic and feedback.
There are reports of Pinterest links driving very little traffic to the source websites.
In her blog post, No Interest in Pinterest, Annie Paxye writes: "I’ve been told by people that I should be flattered that my images are ‘pinned’ or that I should be grateful that it brings traffic to my blog. But after seeing the flow and traffic over time, it just feels like stealing and the traffic seems to have no value. I’m not connecting with more people through this traffic and I’m not hearing why someone likes my posts or images."
Similarly, Bailey of the Mustard Ampersand Blog writes: "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. I don’t expect every user to click through. But Etsy has a strong stats program in place, and I can see exactly how many of my referrals are from Pinterest – and it’s not many. Compared to how many referrals I get from Facebook and Tumblr, it’s shockingly low."
Copyright-infringement platform users often have very limited understanding of the workings of the internet and operate under the delusion that the only way images can be monetized is with the old-fashioned photography business model of licensing for printed applications or other commercial broadcast. They may believe that because they wouldn't "buy" licensing to the images they upload on the servers of copyright-infringement platforms no matter what, they are not hurting the originators of the work. They are not cognizant that on the internet, images are often worth much more than the object they represent, and that the image itself has become the commodity that is consumed - a commodity that is often monetized with advertising.
Potential website visitors have a finite amount of time available for exploring the internet; viewership is therefore a finite resource that webmasters compete for. They compete for this commodity (visitor traffic) in order to display advertisement, or make sales of products. The larger the size of the web, the smaller the amount of time spent per website, on average.
Copyright-infringement platforms increase the size of the web by multiplying the number of pages where content can be viewed, even if this content is often repeated (multiple original pins from source, pins from search engine result pages, repins, repins of repins). In the aggregate, this swelling of content reduces the amount of time people spend on the source websites.
When website visitors spend more of their finite internet viewing time on Pinterest, they spend less time on the source websites as well.
Further, the source websites have to compete with their own infringed images in the pinnosphere (some creators may have more images in the pinnosphere than on their own websites) - with the added attraction of everyone else's best work, and the users getting their egos flattered with comments and followers for their great "picks" while the originators themselves lose both traffic and feedback.
There are reports of Pinterest links driving very little traffic to the source websites.
In her blog post, No Interest in Pinterest, Annie Paxye writes: "I’ve been told by people that I should be flattered that my images are ‘pinned’ or that I should be grateful that it brings traffic to my blog. But after seeing the flow and traffic over time, it just feels like stealing and the traffic seems to have no value. I’m not connecting with more people through this traffic and I’m not hearing why someone likes my posts or images."
Similarly, Bailey of the Mustard Ampersand Blog writes: "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. I don’t expect every user to click through. But Etsy has a strong stats program in place, and I can see exactly how many of my referrals are from Pinterest – and it’s not many. Compared to how many referrals I get from Facebook and Tumblr, it’s shockingly low."
Copyright-infringement platform users often have very limited understanding of the workings of the internet and operate under the delusion that the only way images can be monetized is with the old-fashioned photography business model of licensing for printed applications or other commercial broadcast. They may believe that because they wouldn't "buy" licensing to the images they upload on the servers of copyright-infringement platforms no matter what, they are not hurting the originators of the work. They are not cognizant that on the internet, images are often worth much more than the object they represent, and that the image itself has become the commodity that is consumed - a commodity that is often monetized with advertising.
How Does Pinterest Make Money?
At first, Pinterest monetized its pages with SKIMLINKS. Users would post a picture link to a product that could be purchased, for instance, on Amazon.com using their own affiliate code so that they might receive a commission if a sale was made. Unbeknownst to them, Pinterest was wiping off these affiliate codes and replaced them with its own. This caused some outcry - largely becaues Pinterest did this secretly - and Pinterest dropped Skimlinks late in February 2012.
Now Pinterest is funded by venture capital to the tune of $38 million, with an eye on a future sale of the company or a steady income stream. Pinterest is expected to be monetized some time in the future.
This future may come soon. Just a few weeks after Skimlinks was suspended, on March 22, Business Insider announced that Tim Kendall had been hired by Pinterest. Tim Kendall's claim to fame is to have masterminded the monetization of Facebook pages.
There is money and advertisements in Pinterest's crystal ball.
Now Pinterest is funded by venture capital to the tune of $38 million, with an eye on a future sale of the company or a steady income stream. Pinterest is expected to be monetized some time in the future.
This future may come soon. Just a few weeks after Skimlinks was suspended, on March 22, Business Insider announced that Tim Kendall had been hired by Pinterest. Tim Kendall's claim to fame is to have masterminded the monetization of Facebook pages.
There is money and advertisements in Pinterest's crystal ball.
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