Pinterest Is Evil!… well, ok. maybe not. i dunno.
there’s trouble abrewin’ in the world of Pinterest, and in my little world, it works up into a Photographers v. Pinterest battle. there’s been a lot of talk over the last few days (for some reason) about how nonchalantly Pinterest treats copyright and those who hold the copyright to original works. personally, i’m a bit torn. here’s why.
on the purely personal side of things, i’ve struggled with how to best make use of the service. i’m not a bride-to-be, or a mom/dad-to-be. i’m not especially handy or inventive in the kitchen. i don’t do much in the way of crafts. what i do enjoy are fonts, style, terribly unhealthy foods, and photography. so i began some boards to pin things to, revolving around those things. fonts are difficult things to pin because, well… there’s just so many, it can get overwhelming. style was easy enough; i had a board set up entitled “Things Other Dudes Look Good In” (or something like that). i appreciate good styling and fashion, but i also know 90% of it is not for me. i’m just not built to carry great-looking fashion looks. terribly unhealthy foods- pst, i’m a pro at that. but i also know my family has a history of not-so-great heart health. so far, that’s two out of three boards that were completely empty ventures, or if you’d like, empty pinning. things i have no business thinking about or desiring, but MAN, the emails and notifications i would get when people would re-pin and like stuff! a great feeling!
photography was a whole different beast, though. i always felt a bit… dirty… pinning other photographers’ work, and i could never pin (haha) down why. i think part of it is that as much as i enjoy looking at great photography and great work, i don’t like to dwell on it. look at it once, maybe share with J later on, and that’s it (note: this is different, in my opinion, from studying THE MASTERS and gleaning some amount of wisdom- that’s worth sticking with at length). but apart from not wanting to dwell to much on others works, i also know how strongly i feel about protecting our copyrighted material. i’m exceedingly protective of it, and the manners in which i protect are ever-changing to keep up with changing technology.
i remember the first time the blog got a hit from Pinterest and i went from initial confusion to “this doesn’t make me very happy” to “well, someone appreciates it outside of our client!” and to an extent, i still feel that way! there’s one particular photograph from a wedding we did in Auburn that’s made the rounds a couple of dozen times- it’s not the singular most extraordinary photograph we’ve ever taken, but it’s very pretty and features Samford Hall in the background. and since that photograph is watermarked, it’s clear where it came from and who took it.
but… still. there’s something that just feels a bit weird about it. to this point, that photograph hasn’t pulled in any new work for us. no one’s called or written and said, “i saw your work on Pinterest and just had to call to find out your availability!” so again, it winds up being empty, more of a fruitless venture. and i don’t know how deep Pinterest goes, but i do wonder if at some point, does the originating point of a photograph get lost in the mix? will that photograph go so far down the rabbit hole that eventually no one will know where it came from or who took it?
i’m happy at this point to continue allowing folks to pin from our blog. part of it is just for the neat factor; when i see a ping come through to the blog from Pinterest, i can see exactly where it came from and any potential commentary. and we’re not exactly to the point where shutting down a potential new pipeline of clients is safe; who knows, maybe requests and bookings will start rolling in because someone saw something great we did on someone’s board? but i’ve taken the hypocritical monkey off my back and deleted my Pinterest account, for a couple of reasons…
- if i’m gonna whine & moan about it and share links, i can’t continue being “part of the problem,” so to speak
- i just got nothing out of it. i’ve my fingers in a lot of different social media/networking pies, and while some of them i sort of fade in & out of (like Path), all of them have provided at least some semblance of social-ness, a sense of connection to others. for me, Pinterest just wasn’t doing anything for me. maybe it’s because i’m a guy and Pinterest just doesn’t work for me (and you cannot tell me Pinterest isn’t heavily slanted for use by women; i don’t think there’s anything wrong with that at all, but it feels to be true)
and i don’t begrudge those who will continue to use Pinterest. it can absolutely be useful. i know plenty of friends who’ve made great use of it. it’s a great way to amalgamate thoughts and ideas you may stumble across. but i also feel if you continue to use it, you should be fully aware of all the downsides as well, particularly when it comes to finding original copyrighted works by someone you don’t know. i suggest taking the time to read this great entry here; it’s a long read, and full of legalese (which gets translated), but very insightful and eye-opening about how Pinterest and the issue of copyright don’t co-habitate all that well.
This was great. I read the article yesterday and basically my thought was: I’m not quite scared enough yet. You’re absolutely right, pinterest is very much geared toward women. You are literally the only man I know that is on it. You do bring up an interest point though about not dwelling too heavily in the photography you see on there. Now that I may have to reexamine for myself.
just know that’s a PURELY PERSONAL thing with the way my mind works. if i look too hard and long at something, it gets burned in my brain and i wind up trying too hard to match it. if i give it just a little bit of time, i have an idea of what i saw, what may have made something great (or maybe bad… haha), and move on.
i just prefer pulling inspiration from something a bit more murky that allows me to make something wholly new. but again- that is JUST ME and i’m kind of an odd duck.
I’m getting mixed signals. There’s copyright (your right as the creator of a work to control how your work is used) and then there is credit (people saying saying who created the work). Granting copyright does not require attribution, and providing attribution does not imply permission to copy. It seems you’re more concerned with credit than copyright. If you had a copyright concern, you would have already blocked Pintrest. The very act of someone sharing your photo on Pintrest would be too much. What you seem to be describing is the lack of credit to you about your work, and the potential black hole of sharing shares. While the photo you reference hasn’t brought you any work, as long as nobody claims it as their own (copyright infringement at some level, I’d guess) or is reproducing it without your permission (definite copyright infringement, assuming you’re not consider pinning to be reproducing) it isn’t hurting you to have people sharing the photo.
Ultimately, if you’re like other wedding photographers I’ve heard about, you get paid for taking the photos and for printing the photos (forgive me if that is an obtuse description). Having your small screen-res photos that won’t print well being shared can only increase your exposure (or, at worse, have no impact at all). The people sharing probably wouldn’t buy the photo for the same reason you glance-and-go when you’re looking at photos. So, if you’re thinking the same way I am, it’s not a problem as long as nobody is impacting your revenue stream. That’s the same reason iStockPhoto will give you a tiny watermarked comp for free.
Now, that doesn’t address the actual copyright issues. If sharing on Pintrest is reproducing, there are clearly copyright issues. I’m not addressing that above. I’ve just had this blog post in the back of my mind all day and figured I’d think-out-loud about it since replying on Twitter doesn’t provide enough characters.
Word.
“mixed signals” is a good phrase, because i feel mixed about it. attribution is a massive part of it for me/us. but we watermark all of our publicly published work so it’s not the HUGEST issue unless folks start cropping it out.
but not every photographer or artist watermarks their works. on more than a handful of things i pinned, i’d often wonder, “who did this? who took this photograph?” or “where did this come from?” and no matter how deeply i drilled down, i could never find an answer. of course, i can’t blame Pinterest for that; clearly at some point, that person’s work was picked up somewhere and got shared elsewhere and then somewhere else and so on.
but artists are very precious with their work, and for good reason. the work doesn’t stop at the shutter click; it doesn’t stop until it’s uploaded for the client to view. and heck, even with US, just because we received that initial payment to create the work doesn’t mean potential future profits don’t remain to be made; there’s always the back end where it may get purchased by a long-distance relative or friend. and while it’s a great thing for one’s work to reach a ton more people we may otherwise never come in contact with, there is the faint feeling of things spinning slightly out of control, not knowing where something may wind up (see above paragraph).
again, i cannot, nor am i trying to, put the onus all on Pinterest to fix any potential problems. the internet is too wild and wooly for them to wrangle in on their own. if nothing else, hopefully people just become more aware that attribution is a massive thing for artists and that even if Pinterest doesn’t do their nifty link back to the original source, that they’ll do so on their own.
i had to go back and read the article i linked to so i could provide what (i guess) bothers me in Pinterest’s TOS (yeah, yeah… i know):
“You acknowledge and agree that you are solely responsible for all Member Content that you make available through the Site, Application and Services. Accordingly, you represent and warrant that: (i) you either 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 to grant to Cold Brew Labs the rights in such Member Content, as contemplated under these Terms; and (ii) neither the Member Content nor your posting, uploading, publication, submission or transmittal of the Member Content or Cold Brew Labs’ use of the Member Content (or any portion thereof) on, through or by means of the Site, Application and the Services will infringe, misappropriate or violate a third party’s patent, copyright, trademark, trade secret, moral rights or other proprietary or intellectual property rights, or rights of publicity or privacy, or result in the violation of any applicable law or regulation.”
and that’s where things get a bit dicey. the word “and” in between the two points implies that by pinning something you fulfill BOTH requirements (that you either own or have consent to share AND that it doesn’t infringe on ownership), not either/or. by its very nature, us including a “Pin It!” button on our blog implies that we are A-OK with folks pinning from various entries as we are the ultimate copyright holders to the properties set forth for viewing; we can absolutely grant that right. but if we did NOT (because we didn’t have a button or statement declaring we were cool with it), then technically, we have not given permission in any way, shape, or form that our materials are available for use on Pinterest and therefore, a user would be in direct violation of Pinterest’s TOS.