Why I Tearfully Deleted My Pinterest Inspiration Boards | Hacker News Reader

Why I Tearfully Deleted My Pinterest Inspiration Boards

ddkportraits.com

25 pointskelnos17 comments

This is one of those areas where the legalese proclaims that the emperor has clothes and all of the marketing copy indicates otherwise. The article's follow-up clearly shows that the Pinterest founder is aware of the conflict, and it's clear that we're at a watershed moment in terms of the legal outcomes.

To my mind, the real question is whether Pinterest pivots like Youtube did and turns into a service where at least a sizable percentage of the usage doesn't violate existing copyright laws or whether it goes the direction of Napster and the lawyers get to it. I wish Ben Silberman all the best... I just don't see a lot of success stories in our space once the lawyers show up.

Edit: Obviously existing copyright law sucks - very few people on HN disagree on that point. My interest is in seeing startups succeed within the context of existing copyright law as I fear it won't be changing for the good any time soon.

Pinterest is under the DMCA safe harbor provision though right? Copyright holders would have to pursue an infringer directly and issue take down notices. Maybe image recognition and a big notice saying the copyright holder has banned that image from Pinterest, contact them here.

Pintrest is very much covered under the DMCA safe harbor. As for users, to get real damages under copyright law, a copyright owner need to register your copyrights with the Copyright office AND prove monetary loss. Almost no one does the former and the latter ain't easy. 2) Any photographer who doesn't want someone "pinning" their photos is far more likely to just use a DMCA takedown notice.

Furthermore, there's also two controlling rulings on fair use - Perfect 10 v. Google and Perfect 10 v. Amazon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_10,_Inc._v._Amazon.com,.... These make it clear that there's a very fine case for Pinterest sharing to be legal for USERS.

Let me now reiterate - pinning a copyrighted photo isn't going to get you sued or destroy your life savings. Both the photographers whining about Pinterest and the non-copyright lawyers penning self-agrandizing "zomg, copyright law is crazy" blog posts need to get over themselves.

No court is going to award damages for pinning a photo, when the DMCA makes it simple to take them down and Pinterest users aren't making money off the photos.

Which is to say even though U.S. copyright law is dumb, it ain't that dumb and the hysteria over Pinterest needs to stop.

Those cases do not stand for the proposition you claim they stand for. The Perfect 10 cases stand for the proposition that a website using thumbnails of copyrighted works may be protected by the fair use doctrine if the creation and distribution of the thumbnails are incidental to a non-infringing purpose (in both Perfect 10 cases, some form of search.)

Pinning images in Pinterest is not transformative in any way. Users upload the original copyrighted photos, which are then distributed by Pinterest. In this regard, Pinterest is protected by the DCMA safe harbor, but the users are not. Note that this means that Pinterest would be protected by both the Perfect 10 case law and the statutory DCMA safe harbor, but that users are generally not protected by either.

Pinning a copyright photo probably won't get you sued, because lawsuits are expensive. But if you do get sued, the court can impose statutory damages, of at least $750 but up to $150,000 for wilful infringement. Statutory damages are in lieu of actual damages, so the copyright owner does not have to prove economic harm. See 17 USC 504.

A lot of the hysteria is driven by their TOS, or the attention it has gotten.

In the event that one of their users got taken to the cleaners by a litigating content owner, would Pinterest really consider trying to get their legal costs paid too? Indemnification is one thing, not that it would stand up if they didn't obey a take-down request, but that clause should be dropped. They'll never use it and it's making them look bad.

The real problem, as VengefulCynic said, is the huge discrepancy between what their TOS says and the way they seem to want people to use the site. The fact their 'etiquette' is against posting your own content (I didn't know this before) just drives the point home.

What percentage of users on Pinterest ask permission before posting others' content? It may be the case that many of the content owners are happy for their stuff to be pinned, but they aren't being asked. Throwing up this TOS which, if followed, would turn the site into a ghost town is just dumb.

I guess we can be happy that people are starting to notice that:

  1. Copyright law has not kept up with current social norms and technology.

and

  2. "Terms of Service" are often ridiculous and unreasonable.

So how is Federal copyright laws give the author of any copyrighted work (which includes photographs and copyright attaches automatically as soon as the work is created) the sole and exclusive right to publish and reproduce such work. not keeping up with social norms and technology?

Technology:

The behaviors that fall under "publish and reproduce" have drastically changed since copyright law was drawn up. Professionally reproducing prints and posting a photo to Facebook/Pinterest are very different actions that should be conisdered differently.

Social Norms:

Your daughter posts a video of herself dancing and singing to Justin Bieber to YouTube. You pin a photo from a famous photographer to your "Inspiration" folder on Pinterest. Most people feel copyright should allow this type of sharing.

I don't get the relationship to music piracy. When people were sharing and downloading music on a mass scale they were getting for free (illegally) what they would have ordinarily paid for. Other than major content publishers, who license their work, what small hobby blog pays for each they lift from a Google image search? The majority of Pinterest users wouldn't normally buy cute cat pictures or inspiring photos for web use. Even if you implement micro payments I think it would kill photo sharing.

If they are suggesting they will pursue Pinterest users than the rest of the internet better line up for prosecution right? If I upload one of these pictures to Google+, Facebook or MySpace and share it there it's the same situation no?

IANAL, but the "but everyone is doing it" defense may have value if you can prove that the party sueing you knows of, but does not prosecute, other cases, but it will not automatically get you of the hook.

On the other hand, law is there for the people, not the other way around. So, if you can argue that _the_people_ will not want to see these things punished, you may see the law changed. However, I do not see that happening soon. At the least there will have to be some provisions disallowing large scale copying. For example, I doubt that the National Geographic or Playboy magazine would be happy if it became legal to republish, as a hobby, their photo series.

I think it's important to note that this is from a month ago, and there have been a number of follow-ups:

1. My Date with Ben Silberman [founder] http://ddkportraits.com/2012/02/my-date-with-ben-silbermann-...

2. Responses to Questions http://ddkportraits.com/2012/03/my-top-50-responses-to-your-...

3. Passion for Pinterest and Call for Inputhttp://ddkportraits.com/2012/03/passion-for-pinterest-and-a-...

But as VengefulCynic said, I think it's good that Pinterest is bringing this IP discussion more into the mainstream.

I read from this that one of the core tenants of Web 2.0 was "content generation is for suckers" - Pinterest has in common with lots of other boom sites that they provide a venue for users to share the fruits of their own labors with others, and benefit from that fact, while the users rarely get anything out of the deal.

In Pinterest's case (like YouTube) it's possible, in fact, that their users might get really screwed, actually.

The Pinterest backlash reminds me more of the google news backlash. Old school businesses lording over their content, not realizing that there is more to gain by sharing. The terms need improvement, but their service is a boon to sites with content to share.

Well, the terms are certainly ridiculous, but the Google News comparison doesn't quite work for me. Google News provides the headline, the byline, a brief snippet, and maybe a thumbnail. And a link, of course. If you want more than the headline, you need to click the link. The fact that publishers often allow you to bypass their paywall if the referrer is Google News shows that this traffic is valuable. But with Pinterest users are much less likely to visit the original site.

That doesn't mean there's no value for the owners of the content, e.g. if it's a pic of some sort of product there's probably quite a lot of upside.

But Youtube is still a much more valid comparison - it's user-uploaded content, not necessarily user-generated, whereas Google News is scraped.

Also, this is less substantive, but "lording over their content ... " ... you make it sound like it's not theirs or something.

I would guess over 90% of photos pinned on Pinterest are from pages that contain text and other photos. A single pinned photo is a lot like a news excerpt.

When I say "lording over their content" (which I agree is theirs), what I mean is that they are lording over their business model, or the perceived value of the content. They are thinking it is a zero sum game and that if you view their photo somewhere else, they lost something.

What are the real world scenarios where Pinterest isn't helping the content owner of a piece of pinned content? My experience is that it is a massive traffic driver; that users do indeed visit the original site, a lot. Even if many don't, that doesn't mean that is lost traffic.

Name a single YouTube user who has gotten "really screwed." They get their submitted vids taken down via DMCA notices and occasionally banned.

If I were to seriously analyze every EULA or ToS I've agreed to, I would never use anything.

Like the legal system in a third-world country, we're expected to intuit the right and wrong ways to act and hope for the best.

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