Pinterest - the Next Big Thing or doomed to failure?

[Clinton]

Jeff Roberts, a copyright lawyer, reports on Pinterest.

There's hardly anywhere you can go online now without Pinterest coming up in the discussion or seeing a link to the site. And it's not a bad site. Clever idea and implementation.

The buzz is similar to what Facebook had in the early days. It was voted one of Time magazine's top 50 sites of 2011.

But, it sounds like they're getting inundated with copyright violation complaints and claims that they are a haven for copyright violation.

Jeff says

For Pinterest, the legal issues are not cut and dry. On one hand, its notification scheme should grant it a “safe harbor” under copyright law. It is this law that protects sites like Facebook or YouTube from being sued when a user uploads copyrighted material.

But on the other hand, Pinterest’s business is based almost entirely on using images without permission—something that could lead it to lose its safe harbor protection in the same way that Grokster did.

What's your take? Exploitative of copyright holders ... or just a reflection of how the web works nowadays? Destined to last or just a flash in the pan?

[ClaytonL]

First off, if Pinterest really gets in trouble, I think they could just support robots.txt. I think that would surely be enough to maintain their safe harbor protection.

Secondly, Pinterest is here to stay! It's the social site that these magazines wish they would have built. As you can see, the demand for that type of content is there. I know Pinterest is supposed to be more than homekeeping, but it's been embraced and taken over by that community and I think it will always be it's core. Of course, right now it's riding a huge wave of popularity and a fraction of it's current user base will stop using it once the newness wears off. However, I think from now on it will be the go to social sites for the homekeeping market.

[akirk]

I am very involved in the photography world - and a lot of photogrpahers use it for 'mood boards' collections - interestingly enough the photographers who they pin seem not to mind - the main consideration being that it is only linking to their images, not copying them...

Alasdair

[bustour]

My wife was an early adopter of Pinterest and loves it. She now gets a substantial amount of traffic, about half of her overall visits (~3,000/day) , from Pinterest to her crafting/art blog.
As to whether it will last or not, it's hard to say. It seems to have a bit of momentum at this point but the web's a fickle beast.

[Clinton]

From Pinterest's terms

1. When you upload anything on there, whether you own the copyright or not, you give Pinterest full rights to sell that material or do whatever they want with it

By making available any Member Content through the Site, Application or Services, you hereby grant to Cold Brew Labs a worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, royalty-free license, with the right to sublicense, to use, copy, adapt, modify, distribute, license, sell, transfer, publicly display, publicly perform, transmit, stream, broadcast, access, view, and otherwise exploit such Member Content only on, through or by means of the Site, Application or Services

2. When you upload something you are guaranteeing that you own the copyright to it i.e that you are

... the sole and exclusive owner of all Member Content that you make available through the Site, Application and Services or you have all rights, licenses, consents and releases that are necessary...

I know, I know, most people don't read the T&Cs, but that does not mean they are not subject to them. You could be sued for falsely claiming that you own the copyright to that photograph you posted.

Maybe there's money to be made here - create content that users and companies find compelling enough to post on their boards. Then sue them for compensation or threaten to sue and let them buy you off.

[mpcovcd]

They released a no pin meta tag yesterday <meta name="pinterest" content="nopin" /> . Blog entry below

http://blog.pinterest.com/post/17949261591/growing-up

[Clinton]

What a freakin' cheek! I spat my coffee all over my keyboard. That post says that if you don't want people to illegally use your content on pininterest it's your responsibility to stick a meta tag on every page of your site!

Forcing the webmaster to take steps to block copy theft is just not on. Google and others have done this in the past - throwing the onus on the copyright holder - but this is neither an elegant solution nor is it a practical one. What next, a meta for twitter, one for facebook, one for every large bully boy site out there?

[Learningmore]

They released a no pin meta tag yesterday <meta name="pinterest" content="nopin" /> . Blog entry below

http://blog.pinterest.com/post/17949261591/growing-up

Interesting.
I enjoyed Pinterest a lot as a casual user, but now Im noticing spammy type pins popping up. Annoying.
Because of this, I think this will cause people to want to use Pinterest to follow specific Pinners instead of perusing the whole site

Additionally, Im noticing cute pins of mine being deleted because of copyright holders whining about it.
One was a repin I pinned for photo of a baby's foot and the quote text on it was to remember what a miracle one is.
It just seemed like a very simple pin and not something the poster maker would have a problem being pinned.
I did some sleuthing and it turns out the copyright holder wants to make money of it.
Which is fine. But if she was smart she should have just commented on my pin with a link to her website to buy her poster.

[Chabrenas]

What next, a meta for twitter, one for facebook, one for every large bully boy site out there?

Quickly followed by a meta meta tag pointing to my list of groups of which I'm a member, stored on guess-who's servers...

[Clinton]

From Pinterest's terms

1. When you upload anything on there, whether you own the copyright or not, you give Pinterest full rights to sell that material or do whatever they want with it

This has changed today. Pinterest has updated their terms and will soon stop this all your content is belong to us.

Now all they've got to do is stop the other blatant copyright infringing that goes on.