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| Getty Images pinned and re-pinned - some in hi-res |
Is Pinterest the new Napster or a Wake-Up Call for a Better Copyright Idea?
The headline in The Wall Street Journal asked, "Is Pinterest the Next Napster?" It's a good question, but perhaps the wrong one.
The story focuses on a blog post written by Kristin Kowalski titled, "Why I Tearfully Deleted My Pinterest Inspiration Boards" that went viral.
Pinterest is a social site for image sharing around themes that launched in March 2010. It gained a considerable following and was one of Time's "50 Best Websites of 2011." In January 2012 it drove more referral traffic to retailers than YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn combined and became the fasted site to ever break 10 million unique visitors.
As its popularity increases, so have concerns about whether its users aren't just sharing their favorite things, but engaging one another in the web's largest copyright infringement platform.
Ms. Kowalski, a photographer/lawyer, feels pretty strongly that it's infringement to re-pin work from others. Kowalski turned to federal copyright laws and found a section allowing fair use without permission when someone is criticizing it, commenting on it or conducting research. Re-pinning doesn't fall under any of those categories. She concludes that the only option is to either pin your own work or get off Pinterest altogether.
In a recent TechCrunch interview, Jonathan Klein, co-founder and CEO of Getty Images, discussed photo sharing on the Internet. As the world's largest stock agency, he is focused on protecting the photographs that belong to his company -- and making sure that Getty and its affiliated photographers get paid.
Mr. Klein is not concerned about people playing with Getty photos; teenagers using for school projects and folks putting them up on their personal blogs -- or, at the moment, even Pinterest.
So when does Getty snap into action? The moment a website starts running ads alongside those images. As Klein told TechCrunch in the interview above: "We're comfortable with people using our images to build traffic. The point in time when they have a business model, they have to have some sort of license."
This is why Pinterest has a big problem on its hands. When they start generating revenue, which they have not done so far, this will spotlight copyright issues and the lawyers will pounce. The site has certainly built immense traffic by allowing people to share and collect as many photos as they want -- many of which inevitably don't belong to them in the legal sense. However, the moment that Pinterest starts making money on its own, intellectual property owners such as Getty Images will have the right to ask that Pinterest pay up -- or start deleting pinboards.
But could it be instead that pinning other people's images -- the way Pinterest intends and the way most people use the site -- is fair use? Courts have held that search engine thumbnails are sufficiently transformative to not be infringing. In that context, are Pinterest boards likewise transformative?
Pinterest is probably counting on that -- being considered like a search engine were this ever come to a courtroom, since pins link back to the original site. Pinterest may also have concluded that its users' creation of "boards" is use of content in ways that is akin to collages and mashups, which many consider transformative and therefore lawful.
So there are understandably different opions on the issue of copyright legality. However, beyond questions of copyright, underlying all of this is a huge problem to which the only solution is a mass recognition of the cultural shift occurring. Simply put, the Internet is built on a culture of sharing.
Creatives of all types are often surprised to find their photos shared or their designs copied by others. All art is ultimately derivative -- from the great masters like Karsh or Hemingway or Matisse -- whether the artist wants to admit it or not. We build on those who came before us. That's not a bad thing -- it's just art.
Sources:
1. Therese Poletti, "Is Pinterest the Next Napster," The Wall Street Journal, March 14, 2012
2. Collen Taylor, "For Pinterest, Revenue Will Turn Copyright Questions Into Real Problems," TechCrunch, March 22, 2012
3. Anthony Wing Kosner, "Pinterste: Napster for Housewives or Wake Up Call for a Better Copyright Idea?", Forbes, March 15, 2012
4. Ruth Suehle, "Pinteerest and Copyright: Why You Should Keep Sharing -- and Keep Pinning," Opensource.com, March 7, 2012
