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Pinterest, We Have a Problem

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Re: Pinterest, We Have a Problem

#91

Post by js2 »

briandon wrote: post #83
js2 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recently, I wanted to make some picture postcards of various locations around the US for personal use, so I went looking for images. I found many on Flickr. I wanted to compensate the original photographer. There is no easy way to do this. At best, some photographs have a "request to license" link that bounces you to a third party (typically Getty Images) which offers to "Review the photo to determine if it's a good…

The Getty Images process doesn't sound too terrible to me. Is the up-to-a-week wait partly a consequence of GI giving the photog a chance to approve/deny the request? That would be reasonable -- they might not want, for example, a Neo-Nazi group licensing their photo of blonde, blue-eyed kids for some sort of racist poster campaign. Also, $100 licensing for a photo that you really love is cheap as chips. By personal…

I was making a single postcard per image, and needed a total of 30 separate images. These were going to a family member (30 postcards from 30 locations for her 30th birthday).

Having to wait a week for each image, and pay $100 each, wasn't going to work.

For personal use such as this it'd be nice if there were an easier way. Maybe Flickr could even be the middle man and take a 30% cut.

Re: Pinterest, We Have a Problem

#92

Post by Terretta »

js2 wrote: post #27
OneBytePerGreen wrote: post #18

Pinterest has a market valuation of > 200 million dollars... 30%+ of its images are flickr images... ... 99%+ of which are "All Rights Reserved". How many ... page views, ... new subscribers, ... and $$$ have the most-pinned flickr images generated for pinterest, with the author not seeing a single cent... not even having the satisfaction of seeing their popularity on pinterest reflect in their flickr stats? And: Pin…

Recently, I wanted to make some picture postcards of various locations around the US for personal use, so I went looking for images. I found many on Flickr. I wanted to compensate the original photographer. There is no easy way to do this. At best, some photographs have a "request to license" link that bounces you to a third party (typically Getty Images) which offers to "Review the photo to determine if it's a good…

"This may make sense for images which are to be used in a commercial context, but for personal use like how I wanted to use the images, it's way too expensive and much too much friction."

That's why Flickr lets you search for Creative Commons images, for which the photographer gives you that personal use permission in advance.

Re: Pinterest, We Have a Problem

#93

Post by jacobolus »

jfarmer wrote: post #88
ktizo wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot see how you can have (in reality, not legally) agreed to a clause without first knowing about it.

Much of it is a conceit, yes, and I'm not qualified to comment on the legal precedents surrounding such licenses. I'm sure Pinterest makes you check a box saying you agree to the Terms of Use before they let you create an account. Whether that's sufficient is up to a court to decide, and an attorney could tell you the likelihood of a successful suit given a specific fact pattern. I'm not an attorney, though. As I sai…

Actually, Flickr’s TOS (now a general Yahoo one) is quite different. They make it clear that their rights are limited to the specific uses obvious and essential to the function of their sites:

> Yahoo! does not claim ownership of Content you submit or make available for inclusion on the Yahoo! Services. However, with respect to Content you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Yahoo! Services, you grant Yahoo! the following worldwide, royalty-free and non-exclusive license(s), as applicable:

> With respect to photos, graphics, audio or video you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Yahoo! Services other than Yahoo! Groups, the license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publicly perform and publicly display such Content on the Yahoo! Services solely for the purpose for which such Content was submitted or made available. This license exists only for as long as you elect to continue to include such Content on the Yahoo! Services and will terminate at the time you remove or Yahoo! removes such Content from the Yahoo! Services.

The key here is “solely for the purpose for which such Content was submitted or made available.” Pinterest’s ToS doesn’t have such language.

Additionally, Yahoo’s ToS doesn’t indemnify Yahoo against all possible liability or force their legal bills w/r/t copyright claims &c. onto users. The relevant language is much more constrained:

> You agree that Yahoo! has no responsibility or liability for the deletion or failure to store any messages and other communications or other Content maintained or transmitted by the Yahoo! Services. You acknowledge that Yahoo! reserves the right to log off accounts that are inactive for an extended period of time.

Re: Pinterest, We Have a Problem

#94

Post by paulofisch »

tedivm wrote: post #75
aiscott wrote: post #55

I'm an amateur photographer, and I wasn't too concerned about this until I read that by Pinning something, their TOS says I am granting them rights to sell my work. I don't like that very much. By making available any Member Content through the Site, Application or Services, you hereby grant to Cold Brew Labs a worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, royalty-free license, with the right to sub…

>only on, through or by means of the Site, Application or Services. That is the key line everyone is skipping over. It limits the rest of the clause quite a bit.

As a content owner, if I post my own stuff then I've still given them the right to sell it through the Site/App/Service by these terms.

It provides some limits, but not the ones consistent with the service they claim to offer. They can start selling mugs with my photos whenever they like. The horror :O

Re: Pinterest, We Have a Problem

#95

Post by zerostar07 »

greendestiny wrote: post #87
jfarmer wrote: post #51

I have one direct comment and one meta-comment about the issue of Pinteret and copyright. First, I see no issue with their Terms of Service. That language is 100% cover-your-ass boilerplate, and any site that allows people to upload content will have a similar clause in their ToS. Facebook, YouTube, SoundCloud, etc. all do. See, e.g., section 6.C of YouTube's ToS: http://www.youtube.com/static?gl=US&template=terms If…

Pinterest has built a service around sharing much like Reddit but instead of using links it appropriates the content and tries to 'pin' that on the user. I fully expect Pinterest to have to change the way they operate to make it more inline with a google images style of caching, where they assume the responsibility for reproducing the images. I think Pinterest just needs some smarter lawyers.

Does the ToS indemnify them the way they think they do anyway? If it ever came to court , i doubt pinterest would be able to put the blame solely on the user.

Re: Pinterest, We Have a Problem

#96

Post by petegrif »

ktizo wrote: post #82
jfarmer wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they're definitely playing with fire, and they'll have to address it soon given the rate they're growing. But the outrage, outrage , OUTRAGE at Pinterest over this clause here just tells me people are ignorant of (1) what this clause really means and (2) how many times they've agreed to it in the past. It's 100% nerdrage in my opinion, and a month from now nobody will be talking about it.

I cannot see how you can have (in reality, not legally) agreed to a clause without first knowing about it.

I think this is extremely common. Most people don't read Terms of Service Agreements. And an even higher percentage of people don't read Updates to such agreements.

Re: Pinterest, We Have a Problem

#97

Post by bobzimuta »

OneBytePerGreen wrote: post #18

Pinterest has a market valuation of > 200 million dollars... 30%+ of its images are flickr images... ... 99%+ of which are "All Rights Reserved". How many ... page views, ... new subscribers, ... and $$$ have the most-pinned flickr images generated for pinterest, with the author not seeing a single cent... not even having the satisfaction of seeing their popularity on pinterest reflect in their flickr stats? And: Pin…

  30%+ of its images are flickr images...
What's the source for this?

Re: Pinterest, We Have a Problem

#98

Post by billpatrianakos »

What we have here is manufactured outrage. Total non-story. I hope others don't start piling on now that this has been written.

The real deal is that Pinterest is screwed either way. These terms sound scary but so long as they are enforced sanely there should be no problem. What do you expect them to do? Assume liability for users posting content they should not be posting? They might as well not exist. A lot of startups these days may as well not even try to get traction as long as bloggers keep getting their panties in a twist over every TOS they see.

Pinterest provides a service for free that people seem to love. So long as no one is paying them and they haven't gone public they're damn smart to have these terms. If I ran Pinterest I wouldn't want to assume liability for some asshole who leaks a top secret photo on my site that I let him use for free and as long as I'm giving that service for free I'm going to make some cash out of my users. This is nowhere near evil. It's business. If someone doesn't like it they don't have to use it.

Question: How do you get over writer's block? Answer: Start reading some terms of service or privacy policy docs from any popular online startup and manufacture some outrage over it. Truth is, if you read any TOS or privacy policy you're going to find something you can turn into a big deal most of the time. I've had it with the TOS/privacy policy outrage blogs.

Re: Pinterest, We Have a Problem

#99

Post by petegrif »

jfarmer wrote: post #51

I have one direct comment and one meta-comment about the issue of Pinteret and copyright. First, I see no issue with their Terms of Service. That language is 100% cover-your-ass boilerplate, and any site that allows people to upload content will have a similar clause in their ToS. Facebook, YouTube, SoundCloud, etc. all do. See, e.g., section 6.C of YouTube's ToS: http://www.youtube.com/static?gl=US&template=terms If…

I think the point is well made about Youtube. There was indeed a huge amount of 'pirated' content on Youtube in the early days. Pinterest may be even worse because (a) the UI is specifically designed to make it incredibly easy to copy content. The overwhelming majority of Pinterest's content appears to be copied in this way. With Youtube at least people could and did upload a huge amount of their own content. And this is directly relevant to (b) Whereas Youtube was about hosting video content which may or may not have been copied Pinterest is so dominantly about copying content that it is much more like the case of the P2P sites whose whole modus operandi was to enable copying. It wasn't an unexpected or relatively minor aspect of their business - it was their business. And IMHO copying is Pinterest's business. The courts took a dim view of the P2P sites claiming that they were just the innocent service providers because of the overwhelming dominance of the use of the service and the fact that the site was designed to facilitate it. My suspicion is that Pinterest's moves to provide facilities to block pinning are legally motivated to fend off suits to the effect that they are unashamedly a copying engine.

Re: Pinterest, We Have a Problem

#100

Post by lwat »

billpatrianakos wrote: post #98

What we have here is manufactured outrage. Total non-story. I hope others don't start piling on now that this has been written. The real deal is that Pinterest is screwed either way. These terms sound scary but so long as they are enforced sanely there should be no problem. What do you expect them to do? Assume liability for users posting content they should not be posting? They might as well not exist. A lot of star…

So your argument is that everyone has bad TOSes and therefore we should just ignore it?
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