I am so over Facebook. I now spend my waiting in the carpool line, sitting at basketball practice, should be grading papers, time on Pinterest. For those of you still stuck in 2011, Pinterest is basically a site of online pinboards. People “pin” images of things they like, are interested in, think are beautiful, funny, whatever, onto boards. You can follow other people’s boards, and then “repin” the things that you like. It sounds sort of lame, but trust me, it is addictive.
Turns out, all this pinning may be a violation of copyright law. When I read this article about an attorney and pinning fool that blogged about her concerns, I have to say I was not surprised. Most of the images that you see online are owned by someone through copyright law. That means that you need their permission to use those images in any way. The only exception to that rule is fair use. It may be that using thumbnails only of images does not violate copyright law, as we will learn in a case in the IP chapter later this semester. But all this concern about Pinterest is a perfect example of how, yet again, our copyright laws cannot keep up with technology.
Do you use Pinterest? Do you think your pinning is a violation of the copyright law?
9 Comments
Nick Li posted on March 19, 2012 at 12:54 pm
I had no idea this law existed. I thought as long as you didn’t profit off of their work and gave credit to the person who owned the image/linked to the original source, it was A-ok.
James T. Curtis posted on March 19, 2012 at 11:30 pm
I have not yet used Pinterest but a lot of my friends absolutely love it. You can see through Facebook all their recent activity. I agree with Nick that I had no idea this existed. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this though. Pinterest is a website that allows people to repost pictures so more people get to see these photos. I’m not entirely sure how Pinterest works but if you can post any photos, isn’t the ability to repost these photos a good thing for those that took them? In the end, Pinterest is gaining a lot of attention and popularity and if it is fact illegal, that will not be a good.
Julia Poon posted on March 20, 2012 at 3:37 pm
I do not use Pinterest, but now I’m about to start! I don’t think pinning should be a violation of the copyright law and I agree with Nick and James. On the website, people are simply sharing pictures of things they like. If anything, this is a positive thing for people who own the pictures because they are gaining attention. If people were printing these pictures and selling them, that would be another story. But since there isn’t really any harm in this website, I think it’s a cool concept and now going to be my new form of procrastination as well.
Hope Blalock posted on March 20, 2012 at 10:03 pm
First off, I love Pinterest (especially for finding recipes!) and I sincerely hope that nothing about the website changes. Like the others who have posted, I had no idea that this was a violation of copyright law. Partially because “Pinning” something is almost like a combination of bookmarking something and maybe emailing the link to someone. I suppose technically, you are publishing someone else’s photo–but it never occurred to me that that would be breaking the law (partially because with a website as big as Pinterest, I would have thought someone would have caught this flaw as soon as it started to become popular).
Also, if someone were to be charged for this infringement, would it be the website, the users, or both?
Jinfeng Cai posted on March 26, 2012 at 8:37 pm
First of all, I have no idea what is Pinterest. But after I browsed the website, it seemed so much fun. Personally, I would not relate “pinning” as a violation of copyright law. I feel people are just sharing their happiness for fun.
Yuchen Qin posted on March 28, 2012 at 10:16 pm
I understand that the law is strict and sometimes seems coldblooded–such as destroying the hobby of pinning Kirsten Kowalski’s favorite photos to the website. However, the borderline of copyright law itself is complicated and vague to people. Kowalski must have not known that she committed a crime when she posted the photos. Also, I appreciate the last sentence in the blog–“our copyright laws cannot keep up with technology.” It is very true that intellectual property develop and update so quickly that the law, which is made to protect it, cannot be updated as quickly as the intellectual property itself. This website is not harmful, and worth spending idle time on. People download and post all kinds of web resources everyday, sometimes it is hard to distinguish which would violate the copyright law. We need to be cautious about that when we ourselves are using Pinterest!
Sophie Park posted on April 4, 2012 at 4:26 pm
This only makes me wonder why Tumblr didn’t get the same attention that Pinterest did. Both share pictures instantaneously with a click of a button, without any copyright attachments to them.
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