The Pintrest copyright problem

Pinterest has enjoyed explosive growth as one of the most popular new social networks on the Internet, but has become a copyright nightmare for subscribers, many of whom have no idea about copyright issues. The image snagging site draws over 1 billion views a month by allowing subscribers to organize their finds in a "bulletin" board format. The bulletin boards are organized into categories that are customized to suit each person's interest. The issue also happens to business listings on business directories.

The bad news is that the only way that Pinterest subscribers can get around a quagmire of copyright issues is to obey the law: They have to get the copyright owner's permission for every image that they pin or they have to find out if the photo is available under creative commons or open stock licensing release. Otherwise they can be in Napster quality trouble. Napster was a music download site that was sued for copyright infringement in the 1990s.

Unsuspecting image and content creators loved the idea of getting free PR and rapid publicity bursts when their photographs were pinned. They were seeing "repins", but were they actually getting any income producing views that originated from Pinterest?

According to Business Insider, a former Pinterest subscriber who is also an attorney became concerned about "pinning" images from the web and discovered that,

"Copyrighted work can only be used without permission when someone is criticizing it, commenting on it, reporting on it, teaching about it, or conducting research. Repinning doesn't fall under any of those categories."

Anyone who feels that their copyrighted material has been improperly used can go to the copyright policy and get instructions for contacting Pinterest and reporting the issue.

Subscribers will be notified every time they receive a complaint and the offending content will probably be deleted. Too many complaints may cause the subscriber to lose their Pinterest account. Mechanisms are in place to allow subscribers to challenge erroneous deletions and to counter complain.

Meanwhile, subscribers have been led down a garden path of copyright violating image snagging, while image owners have been unwittingly exposing their full images to potential copyright violations that they will have to track down on their own.

In summary, the only way that Pinterest subscribers can get around the copyright problem is to get the copyright owner's permission for each and every image that they snag, or to use creative commons images. Otherwise, Napster grade legal trouble could come their way.