Pinterest, We Have a Problem
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Pinterest, We Have a Problem
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Re: Pinterest, We Have a Problem
#2There was a similar HN post/Google+ post last week. I can't remember where I read it.
Something along the lines of an avid lawyer decided to kill her account because she read the ToS and drew exactly the same conclusions as what you had just wrote.
While it's quite easy to regard this as been a ticking timebomb, a few things to probably note.
If you are a photographer or someone who holds copyright in a work you would most likely just issue a DMCA.
Now, lets assume that you aren't content with that. You might argue that you have incurred losses and want some form of damages. You are first going to have to contact Pinterest to get the information of the user who has listed this said work. Are Pinterest goijng to give up this information so willingly? Probably not...
Re: Pinterest, We Have a Problem
#3Oh please, not again.
Absolutely any and every product you use has ridiculous Terms of Service.
These documents are drafted up by lawyers. Their job is not to please the end users who care to read through the legalese. Their job is to create a document that will protect the product vendor in court, if and when the time comes.
Lets put an end to finding eccentricities in ToSs/EULAs, it's getting kind of redundant. If this is some sort of game to see who can find the most absurd clauses in these documents, we're all losing.
Re: Pinterest, We Have a Problem
#4There was a similar HN post/Google+ post last week. I can't remember where I read it. Something along the lines of an avid lawyer decided to kill her account because she read the ToS and drew exactly the same conclusions as what you had just wrote. While it's quite easy to regard this as been a ticking timebomb, a few things to probably note. If you are a photographer or someone who holds copyright in a work you woul…
>You are first going to have to contact Pinterest to get the information of the user who has listed this said work. Are Pinterest goijng to give up this information so willingly? Probably not...
IIRC, in this case you sue John Doe and have the court compel Pinterest to identify him.
Re: Pinterest, We Have a Problem
#5Oh please, not again. Absolutely any and every product you use has ridiculous Terms of Service. These documents are drafted up by lawyers. Their job is not to please the end users who care to read through the legalese. Their job is to create a document that will protect the product vendor in court, if and when the time comes. Lets put an end to finding eccentricities in ToSs/EULAs, it's getting kind of redundant. If…
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Re: Pinterest, We Have a Problem
#6Could this argument also apply to sites like Readability? Since it removes advertising (hence income for the writers) from articles.
Re: Pinterest, We Have a Problem
#7Oh please, not again. Absolutely any and every product you use has ridiculous Terms of Service. These documents are drafted up by lawyers. Their job is not to please the end users who care to read through the legalese. Their job is to create a document that will protect the product vendor in court, if and when the time comes. Lets put an end to finding eccentricities in ToSs/EULAs, it's getting kind of redundant. If…
For "content" creators, these are not absurdities, these are terms that can make or break your ability to get paid for your work and put food on the table.
A photographer having to go to court to defend his ownership of photos they'd exhibited through twitpic and get paid by newspapers who claimed the ToS said he'd released his rights, demonstrates this is not a "please not again" problem, this is ongoing, big corps are misusing these at the expense of individual artists, and the problem's getting worse.
Every day I talk to artists who have no idea that posting their latest music video to a video sharing site could give that company performance rights in other media, or, as in this case, that pinning their own photos to Pinterest would let Pinterest publish a "Best Pins of 2012" book w/o compensating the artist.
This needs to be called out and both consumers and creators deserve to be informed.
Re: Pinterest, We Have a Problem
#8Didn't Pinterest address this to a certain degree? At least from the content creators - http://blog.pinterest.com/post/17949261591/growing-up says that you can add a meta tag marking your content as not pinnable.
Re: Pinterest, We Have a Problem
#9Watermark the pictures in your blog?
By the way, I found out that you can watermark all of your images that you're about to upload to Picasa Web via Picasa Desktop (there's an option to do that before you Sync to Web). I found that feature very useful if you organize your pictures using Picasa (and show them on your blog).
Re: Pinterest, We Have a Problem
#10Oh please, not again. Absolutely any and every product you use has ridiculous Terms of Service. These documents are drafted up by lawyers. Their job is not to please the end users who care to read through the legalese. Their job is to create a document that will protect the product vendor in court, if and when the time comes. Lets put an end to finding eccentricities in ToSs/EULAs, it's getting kind of redundant. If…
For "content" creators, these are not absurdities, these are terms that can make or break your ability to get paid for your work and put food on the table. A photographer having to go to court to defend his ownership of photos they'd exhibited through twitpic and get paid by newspapers who claimed the ToS said he'd released his rights, demonstrates this is not a "please not again" problem, this is ongoing, big corps…
Let me rephrase GP's comment, since I felt the same thing as them. Allow me to set out a hypothetical.
You find that Pinterest's terms are awful, and stage a very successful revolt with your own site, sans the offensive terms. Users flock to your site, and Pinterest dies a sad death. One of the copyright owners of your "pinned" content decides to go after you, and decides to sue the pants off you. So you freak out and hire a top-notch lawyer, who will draft a new set of terms for your users to shield you from the liability you now realize you have.
Repeat, iterate, and before you know it -- your top-notch lawyer guarantees that you will face no more expensive liability, but you now have the onerous terms set out in practically all sites that allow user-generated content.
Basically, these terms allow you to bump the liability from yourself to the user who uploaded it (because they have pinned the pictures in bad faith, in violation of your terms, etc.)
So there's really no point railing against the terms -- they aren't going away, and the best you can hope for is very minor modifications of wording with sufficient popular pressure. Good luck on that.