Social website Pinterest runs into photography copyright issues
Photographers can easily monitor which of their images have been shared on Pinterest. Here is a screenshot of images published by BJP and shared by users on the social website.
Pinterest, the new social networking site that lets people "pin" images found online, has been accused of encouraging the copyright infringement of photographs. But, BJP finds, photographers can easily monitor how their images are shared
Author: Olivier Laurent
Founded in March 2010, Pinterest has gained popularity in recent months by allowing users to "pin" to virtual boards or collections any images they find online. Using a bookmartlet, the website says it can help "you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes." It adds: "Best of all, you can browse pinboards created by other people. Browsing pinboards is a fun way to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests."
As of February, Pinterest already had 17 million monthly active users.
However, the site has been accused of encouraging copyright infringement by making it easy for people to build up image collections that can be republished and shared without the consent of their copyright owners.
Pinterest believes that it is protected from litigation by the US's Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which "provides safe harbors for exactly this type of platform," says a statement. "We are committed to efficiently responding to alleged copyright infringements. We are regularly improving our process internally with the help of lawyers who are experts in the field of copyright."
Pinterest adds: "As a company, we care deeply about creating value for content creators. We're spending a great deal of time reaching out to content creators to understand their needs and concerns. So far, we've received overwhelmingly positive feedback and have created both tools for publishers who want to make it easier to pin their content (the "Pin It" button for publisher sites) as well as tools for those who would prefer that their material isn't pinned (an opt-out code that content owners add to their site that prevents content from being shared on Pinterest). Our goal at Pinterest is to help people discover the things they love. Driving traffic to original content sources is fundamental to that goal."
Photographers can monitor whether their images have been "pinned" by adding their domain name to the following address: http://pinterest.com/source/YOUR_DOMAIN_NAME.COM/. They can also add the following line of code to their site to prevent people from repinning their images: < meta name="pinterest" content="nopin" />.
Speaking to BJP, media law expert Rupert Grey of Swan Turton, says that while Pinterest can be commended for making these monitoring toold available, it "has a clear duty to inform the photographic sector about the potential [Pinterest] can have in terms of mass copyright infringement."
"They should be contacting the Association of Photographers, the British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies, and all corresponding photographic agencies to inform them on how photographers can protect their images," says Grey.
BJP has also found that Pinterest often removes an image's metadata when it republishes it on its servers, which could lead to the mass production of orphan works.
Developing...
Comments
As I understand it someone can come to my photography site and pin one of my images to Pinterest and they feel they have the right to sell or use my image and if I want to stop their stealing I have to do coding on my website to prevent that? Hopefully I'm missing something
I just tried to access the tool mentioned in this article to check what (if any) content has been pinned from my website.
No matter what variation of the link I use it just comes back with a 404 error...
No, it is a misunderstanding: It is not that someone *could* earn money with your pictures but Pinterest as a company does it definitely. They use the pinning of your good pictures to "create" their money. And the better your pictures, the more pinning, the more money - for them.
The "users" are just cattle on the meadow.
But the money comes from the indirect activity of the users on your pictures.
It is just another proof, that all that we know about copyright in its old, obsolete form needs to be revisited.
It's neither a problem of Pinterest, photographers or their websites' code. It's the mindset present in the current model of claiming copyrights. Internet is a platform of sharing and no one is or ever will be able to change this, so we are better to learn how to accept this and benefit from it.
I can't get that link to work for a .co.uk domain - any ideas?
Interesting article among the furore though - thanks!
I am only an amateur photographer but visited the site and entered my name....and there was one of my photos! I suspect I only found it because it was linked with my name.
Anyway, filled in their complaint form and just received a single line reply: "You recently notified Pinterest of a belief that copyrighted material was being made available through Pinterest.com without authorization. We confirm that we have removed such material. Very truly yours, Pinterest.com"
To be honest, I should be flattered that somebody pinned my shot, but it is the fact that the company claims copyright usage that really annoys me.
For the address that lets you find out if your images have been pinned, you need to enter your domain name without the "www" so for example, in the case of BJP, here's the address I'm entering: http://pinterest.com/source/bjp-online.com/
Replace "bjp-online.com" with your domain name.
Olivier Laurent
News and Online Editor
British Journal of Photography
Thank you for the link to check, one DCMA complaint submitted for two of my images now submitted.
I await the outcome with interest.
Nothing harmless if someone makes money from using my photos without asking my fee *before*. And that is exactly what Pinterest does. Think of yourself if you are really, really open to everyone. But it is completely different thing if I have to add code to my page in order to make clear that someone is not allowed to just take my pics as they like.
I consider the Internet as a marketing tool and anything I post there as effectively in the public domain. To view it any other way seems futile.
The upward effect of "sharing"
@ Wojtek,
The only problem with the cuddly fluffy get used to sharing stuff thing is that, with regard to almost anything involving IP, the sharing tends to invert gravity, with the majority of any financial benefits wafting their way upwards to a very few large (almost monopolistic in some cases) businesses, while a few meagre crumbs, if any, are left for those creatives that supply the fuel for this brave new caring, sharing world.
It may well aggregate professionals and amateurs in many creative disciplines to the same level, but the lack of worthwhile incentives for an increasingly meagre return are more likely to a high average standard of work, but will kill a great deal of the very high quality output we see today. If sharing/theft had been rife from the 16th century onwards, our ntional galleries would probably be the worse for it.
At the very least, I find it quite depressing that I lose the right to set a price for my labour and conditions on its usage so that a bunch of coffee savouring dilettantes can get their rocks off, "pinning" my images to a virtual board for no better reason than to enrich some Silicon Valley VC.
If that's culture, we're toast.
as Carla has already pointed out, this method of tracking your content by inputting your domain name [to http://pinterest.com/source/yourdomainname] doesn't seem to work for .co.uk domain names.
This is like listening to a bunch of celebrities complaining about the paparazzi photographing them. Get over it. It's free publicity. If you don't like it, stop tarting your images all over the web.
What Pinterest does isn't technically new: people have always been able to right-click, save, and share images from websites on message boards, Facebook, through e-mail, etc. If you don't want your images shared by people who love and appreciate them (and generate traffic to your site or lead them to Google you) then either: a) don't put your images on the Internet, b) only post a tiny thumbnail, or c) post watermarks all over your images.
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