The latest shiny, new social media object of desire, Pinterest, has been getting lots of press recently. Some of it concerns the platform's exploding growth—from 10.3 million monthly active users, up from 6.6 million in January 2012—and some of it the ballooning copyright controversy.
One problem with Pinterest is that its basic premise—the user makes copies of images on the Internet and posts them on the Pinterest site (without the content originator's expressed permission to do so)—goes against what every communicator has learned about copyrighting violations. Which is, mainly, try to avoid them.
Granted, Pinterest is fun and cool, says Allison Fitzpatrick, advertising, marketing & promotions partner at law firm Davis & Gilbert LLP, but the copyright issue is "complicated," she says. And it's troubling to stock photo houses, independent photographers, bloggers and other content creators who are complaining about the pinning and re-pinning of their content across the Pinterest platform.
Pinterest, responding to the complaints, just released a code that lets sites block their content from Pinterest activity. And, the company says it follows the Digital Millenium Copyright Act's takedown process in response to complaints. But is this enough?
Some in the social media sphere think it is enough, and pooh-pooh the copyright concerns. After all, pinned content is often linked back to the original site. Besides, what individual or brand wouldn't want to have their content widely distributed online, as it increases Web traffic and, possibly, sales?
Fitzpatrick says that down the line, there could be issues not just involving copyrights, but trademark infringement and defamation—thanks to the ability to comment on pins.
These issues probably won't slow the rise of Pinterest much, but they may give pause to some PR pros currently pining away for the platform.
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