My Brief Fling with Pinterest, Part 2

I still dream about the romance, of course. You know: remembering all the best parts. That boat ride! That dinner! Those truffles!

That tutorial for making your own soap.

Oops. There’s always the part where the analogy breaks down completely, like an old wagon. I think we’ve reached that part. So never mind about the romance. Let’s talk about Pinterest.

Remember: I’m not urging you to give up Pinterest. Not at all. It’s been a huge boon to many people who LOVE having their work pinned and re-pinned. It’s free advertising if it’s linked and credited. I think the problem comes when people re-pin images they love without checking to make sure there’s an appropriate link to the source. The problem for me was the whole part about making sure you have permission. How is that going to work? Some people argue that by putting photos of your work online, you’re giving permission to have them re-posted. I don’t know about the legal issues here, but I’m pretty sure there are a bunch of people who don’t see it that way and don’t want anyone else to do anything with their photos. Ideally, we’d all be savvy about what posting online content really means, but that’s not the case. There are people who upload photos to their blog or website and think that’s where those photos will stay. Finding out that someone has pinned those somewhere else isn’t going to make them happy. The good news is that you can now find code to insert in your website or blog template that prevents the Pin It! app from pinning your content. That gives some people a way to prevent pinning, but it’s one of those things that works great in theory but maybe not so great in practice, with people who have no idea how to tweak their templates and are loathe to pay someone else to do it for them just for that one little snippet of code. On the other hand, companies are urging customers to pin their favorite catalog products and thinking of Pinterest as free advertising. Any opinion about this you can imagine, someone has it.

So that’s my two cents’ worth, but as I say over and over and over: I am not a lawyer. I know virtually nothing about copyright law. I have no idea how all the furor over Pinterest and copyright and terms of use will shake out. Some people say it will all blow over; some people say it will end in disgrace, like Napster. What do you think? Let’s have a discussion and get some more ideas–it’s always good to hear what others are thinking and how they’re using Pinterest and what they think its future will be.

For me, it’s a decision based on two things: time and vibes. I don’t have time to ask for permission to pin things I like–finding contact info, sending a note, waiting to hear back, making sure I save the email granting permission, just in case someone asks. And vibes, or karma: if it’s something that might cause a problem–I’ve heard of artists tracking down everyone who pins their work and asking them to add text to the comments–I’d rather just look instead of participate, and that’s what I’m doing now. Just looking. Because for me, just admiring that fabulous guy out there on the dance floor? It’s often way, way better than getting out there with him and trying to keep up.

Ricë also blogs at The Voodoo Cafe.

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