Beware the rise in the Pinterest rate

Stand aside Facebook and Twitter, there’s a new social media kid in town and it’s creating a lot of waves, and potential legal issues as well. For those who haven’t heard of it, Pinterest is one of the fastest-growing social networking sites in the UK and USA. Described as a pinboard-style social photo-sharing website, it allows users to “create and manage theme-based image collections”. According to its mission statement, the aim of Pinterest is to “connect everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting”.

Users can “pin” – Pinterest lingo for posting – their own images, as well as ones they find on the web, and use these to create themed mood boards for purposes such as planning an event, managing a creative project or simply to act as an aide memoire. Because the site allows its users to follow the activities of fellow “pinners” they are able to “like” specific individual images and repin them with ease to their own themed mood boards.

Each image automatically links back to the website where it was originally found so it has been known to be a useful traffic driver for businesses and blogs. This could prove especially beneficial for the likes of architects, photographers and any creative agencies happy for their work to be promoted to a wider, global audience.

Like all social media platforms, there are significant concerns about copyright violation which are beginning to have an impact on the Pinterest community and the owners of some of the images that are used on the site. Many content creators are now taking issue with the fact that their work is effectively being copied and distributed across the site without their permission. This issue is, of course, not unique to Pinterest. Most social media can facilitate a breach of copyright, with users running the risk that any of their own content that they post on a site could be used by others without authorisation. The fact that Pinterest is so strongly image-based makes the potential for copyright violation that much greater.

Retail giant Amazon, which provides web hosting for Pinterest, has been dragged into this issue after being lobbied by a US-based photographers’ organisation. Their complaint was based on the fact that Pinterest was not complying with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and requested that, as the site’s host, Amazon should take notice of any infringements. The online retailer has now agreed to “take appropriate action” in the event of any DMCA violations, but whether this will bring an effective resolution to the problem is far from certain.

Pinterest has also taken action in order to address the issue of potential copyright violation. It has introduced a code which its users can now add to their sites to prevent unwanted pinning. If a fellow user now attempts to share an image from a site with that code in place, a message will appear on their screen advising them that they cannot pin it to their Pinterest site.

These may be welcome developments for anyone concerned about having their content used by others without their knowledge, but it is unlikely to put a stop to the unauthorised use of images.

While there are legal sanctions available, they are extremely difficult to enforce through social media use of copyright as it can be extremely hard to find the original source of a breach.

So what can be done? There are two specific steps I would strongly recommend to help ensure intellectual property is protected. Firstly, anyone using Pinterest should add the security code to its works should they have concerns about copyright violation.

However, it is important to recognise that this code is not foolproof and keen pinners have been known to be able to get round these restrictions.

It is therefore essential to consider watermarking any images that appear on the site. This will not stop others from pinning the images but it will help ensure they are not commercially exploited or published elsewhere without attribution.

l Lisa Douglas is a solicitor at Davidson Chalmers