Legal, Policies, Ethics - Is Pinterest A Legal Matter?

I love Pinterest...the fun little pin-board social photo-sharing website. Pinning or posting almost anything that represents you such as recipes, home decor, gardening and even wedding ideas. It's a great way to pin ideas and things you spot on the web rather than keeping a never-ending list of what it is and where it's found (not speaking by experience of course). I refuse to own a Pinterest account.... but only because I would never get off it. This may change as school comes to a close and there is a much-needed break from finals. For now, however, it happens to be a "catch it when I can" sort of deal. 

Little did I know there were so many legal issues attached to this cute little thing. In fact Kristen Kowalski, photographer and lawyer, wrote a blog post that turned viral on how she realized her infringing pins needed to be deleted. The realization came on how this site where simple virtual scrapbooks of images "pinned", could turn deadly. Ms. Kowalski is now part of Pinterest's effort to push away these concerns and avoid the problem that shut down the digital-music-sharing website, Napster, in 2001. This was to prevent the trading of copyrighted music on that network although sites and other alternatives have given room to do so. 

Ben Silbermann, Pinterest's co-founder and chief executive, really did want to know what they could do to resolve these issues. He contacted the "tearfully" disheartened photographer after reading her blog of removing her pins. Word says that is currently being worked on, but for a million-dollar company, I'm sure they can decide to do whatever they want until matters get worse. Pinterest claims to repeat the rights of copyright holders and will, in fact, offer guidelines and tips for best practices. Every Pinterest user agrees to the terms and conditions read before signing up because of problems that might arise in connected with anything pinned. 

Pinterest was founded in 2009 and attracted 17.8 million users in the month of February. I'm sure Pinterest users are overly confused to hear that you can't pin anything you don't own where the main purpose of the site is to say that you can. The main difference between pinning someone else's material versus your own, is that individual images have to first be upholder and then pinned to a board previously created. 

With photographers getting ticked at the reproduction of their own imagines, Yahoo Inc.'s Flickr added an opt-out code for users of the photo-sharing website. Any user of images they don't want pinned can disable images and bar them from being shared on Pinterest. A variety of companies are now selling rights to their images via Getty Images. Some lawyers are still coming out saying that the company needs to address the inconsistency of its legal fine print if there is to place any blame. Little issues include whether the pictures pinned are copyrighted photos that can be found easily on the Internet, which would constitute the “fair use” where the images’ creators are credited, or if it can be link back to the site of origin. 

As for now, no steps have been taken as far as copyright laws are concerned. Lawyers interviewed for the article Is Pinterest the Next Napster? in The Wall Street Journal, said the courts are far behind where Pinterest could present issues based on copyright laws. So in the end, I’m not sure what the future of Pinterest will be. For now, it’s fun just to look at what other people find and have interest enough in to pin.