You Need to Know About Pinterest and Your Intellectual Properties

Recently we began a Pinterest account to help promote SOAR‘s artists and it’s been getting good response so far. However, in the interest of helping you protect the intellectual rights for your art, we are compelled to fill you in with information we just learned about Pinterest, thanks to an artist who commented in a discussion by members of the ArtBiz! group on LinkedIn. This will most likely require action on your part if you have your own Pinterest account and for sure if you are already represented on SOAR’s boards.

“OK – got new info – and have now changed my mind about Pinterest. According to Artist’s Bill of Rights – pinterest is stripping metadata from files that are uploaded. Article is at http://artists-bill-of-rights.org/news/campaign-news/pinterest-%11-our-view-of-this-project/

I will be adding the no pin code to my site and blog if I can – and will be closing my pinterest account.

For those who are not familiar with metadata – it’s a place where you can store your contact and copyright information electronically in the file. Metadata from digital camera often also provides camera specific identifying information. Properly used – metadata provides another layer of copyright protection for artists. While people will sometimes remove watermarks – they rarely remove the metadata.

I do not want my photography on a site that strips the metadata and copyright info from my photos.”                      ~Patty Hankins, LinkedIn Member

I have talked about file info and metadata many times, both in group settings and workshops and to individual artists. An alarming number of artists don’t know about metadata, and of those who do, many still don’t take the time to enter it into their images or require their webmasters to do so for them. It is essential that you take the time to enter your copyright notice, at the very least, but you’d do yourself a favor to enter your website, contact information and the other types of information this allows you to embed in the metadata of your images – BEFORE you make any reduced-size copies (the file info should be transferred to the copies you make – but always check to make sure) and definitely BEFORE YOU UPLOAD them to the internet anywhere!! But because Pinterest is stripping the file info/metadata that artists do take the time to enter, you need to know more about the issue.

EVERY IMAGE YOU POST ONLINE SHOULD HAVE YOUR COPYRIGHT NOTICE AND CONTACT INFO EMBEDDED IN IT!!

You can learn more about metadata and why it matters at http://www.embeddedmetadata.org

Rather than rewrite their informative posts, we’re going to refer you to a series of posts with current information about the Pinterest controversy at the http://artistbillofrights.org website. The articles below have been written over time, so some of the information has been updated as Pinterest has updated their policies as a result of pressure from this organization. But concerns about the site remain, as they are still stripping all the metadata from images pinned there, so you should familiarize yourself with the entire conversation and decide where you stand on this. It won’t take long – the articles are brief, informative and essential reading for artists and photographers promoting their work online. The site is full of other great info for artists and we’re going to contact them for permission to syndicate their posts to Art Matters! for your convenience.

1.  http://artists-bill-of-rights.org/news/campaign-news/pinterest-%11-our-view-of-this-project/
2.  http://artists-bill-of-rights.org/news/campaign-news/pinterest-versus-ethics-and-the-law-%11-part-1/
3. http://artists-bill-of-rights.org/news/campaign-news/pinterest-versus-ethics-and-the-law-%11-part-2/
4. http://artists-bill-of-rights.org/news/campaign-news/pinterest-terms-of-use-changed/
5. http://artists-bill-of-rights.org/news/campaign-news/publisher-to-profit-from-printing-pinterest-infringed-content/

There is also detailed information regarding copyrights in the digital age at http://www.chillingeffects.org you should be aware of, and one of our quick-response photographers found these excellent articles with additional commentary on the matter:

http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/Pinterest_and_legal_issues_Read_this_before_you_pi_11048.aspx#

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/03/13/dont-get-stuck-by-pinterest-lawyers-warn/tab/comments/#comment-1721218

http://covethercloset.com/delete-pinterest-3-precautions/

This brings me back to SOAR’s Pinterest boards. We opened our account recently as we had continued to hear many reports of huge increases of traffic to user websites after joining the site and thought it would help us help you…but now we’re not so sure about that and we would like each of you to weigh in, particularly those who are already participating in Pinterest and especially those who have a presence on SOAR’s boards.

Considering both the advantages in driving traffic to your listing/website AND the potential infringement risk posed by participating in the Pinterest website, do you feel we should continue to present your work on Pinterest or not?

Please write your answer in the comments. If you’d like to, please let us know why! We emailed all our members this evening and have already received three comments via email – 1 for, 1 against and one neutral. We’ll see if opinions about Pinterest among our listed artists remain 50-50 or wind up leaning one way or the other and will take action based on the results. We need to hear from all of you to make a decision everyone can live with, so please make your voice heard!