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Pinterest, We Have a Problem

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Re: Pinterest, We Have a Problem

#131

Post by pork »

andrewfelix wrote: post #114
pork wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

>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. Sounds like what a lot of people said about SOPA.

Nope, SOPA was another (succesful) attempt by user-generated content sites to deflect liability away from themselves. That's my point, these onerous terms are pretty much in the same spirit, from an Internet company's point of view, as the SOPA protest.

Re: Pinterest, We Have a Problem

#132

Post by EGreg »

This is the problem with importing PUBLIC CONTENT YOU FIND ON THE INTERNET into a website. Not uploading from your computer, or importing from your own account somewhere on another site. If the website actually makes a copy of the media (picture, etc.) and stores it on their servers, they should hope that the DMCA still considers them a safe harbor.

I think their best bet is to store the images only as a cache, and not as a permanent import. If the site owner decides to take down the original, then the cache should disappear soon thereafter.

Re: Pinterest, We Have a Problem

#133

Post by bo1024 »

seldo wrote: post #101
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…

I agree completely, but there's a double-standard here. What if instead of (mostly) photographs pinterest was mostly video? Then it would be YouTube, and everyone is pretty clear that you shouldn't upload a video to YouTube if you don't own it. Of course, some people flout that rule, but I figure the majority of content on YouTube is genuinely owned by the people who post it, while I very much doubt this is the case…

Good point. The reason Pinterest is worth a look from this perspective is because it's a case study in the copyright dilemma. "Everyone loves Pinterest", but it's basically built around systematic copyright violations. (The TOS debate is just a corollary.)

Re: Pinterest, We Have a Problem

#134

Post by billpatrianakos »

andrewfelix wrote: post #122
billpatrianakos wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could and I'm not a lawyer but I'd guess there's a legal reason for it in terms of liability or they're somehow making a profit through that clause. Either way, you don't have to post anything to Pinterest and you have a way to get your content taken down via DMCA. I read a lot of comments like this and I always wonder why it always sounds like someone is forcing you to put your content on their site. No one is…

I'm amazed that you managed construct that condescending diatribe around a simple question. Was there a tone of entitlement or demand in my question? Your argument boils down to 'If you don't like it, don't use it.' So I guess any more discussion on the subject is henceforth mute?

It does boil down "if you don't like it, don't use it" and that wasn't an attack on you at all. What you said reminded me very much of what I've seen others say on similar topics and those people really were acting entitled. No, there wasn't a tone of entitlement in what you said to answer your question. I wasnt singling you out, I was speaking generally and if I sound condescending it's because I'm really tired of seeing people pick on TOS agreements. It's just too easy. I might also just be in a mood tonight but I would never go after one person in particular (usually I should say) so I'm sorry if that came off like I was going after you personally.

Re: Pinterest, We Have a Problem

#135

Post by danboarder »

ajross wrote: post #42
xn wrote: post #32

If posting an image with a comment is fair use, then arguably the combination of the image and the comment constitute the Member Content for which the poster is claiming ownership. If I publish a review of a work of art, including a reproduction of the work, in a magazine, my copyright would cover the entire article including the reproduction. I wouldn't be claiming copyright on the original work.

That's pretty much how I see it too. Yes, you own the review, which includes the right to the image for the fair use purposes of explaining the review only . There is no transitive right if you sell that review to use the image for any other purpose. I too find this insane. If anything qualifies for fair use, surely pinterest does. "Hey look at this cool thing!" is about as close as I can imagine to the platonic idea…

This. Pinterest is like saving/sharing a visual bookmark rather than just a text link. Even /r/pics creates image thumbs similar to Pinterest. People on Pinterest are 'pinning' stuff they found that they like, just like users do on Reddit, or here on Hacker News, for that matter. What's the difference? Bigger thumbnails?

Re: Pinterest, We Have a Problem

#136

Post by __alexs »

billpatrianakos wrote: post #106
lwat wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's one thing to find something truly damning in a TOS and something else entirely to nitpick standard boilerplate legalese meant to protect companies from the very same people who nitpick the TOS in the first place. I know it's cool to be contrarian around here but give me a break. Look at this like a human, not a robot, and you'll see this is a mountain made out of a mole hill. Not saying you in particular are loo…

> It's one thing to find something truly damning in a TOS and something else entirely to nitpick standard boilerplate legalese meant to protect companies from the very same people who nitpick the TOS in the first place.

If "we have non-exclusive rights to use and sell everything you post on our site and you take all responsibility if infringement does occur" is now "standard boilerplate legalese" then actually yes I do think people should be complaining, and not just at Pinterest.

I suppose ultimately they could be going for the YouTube style model of stimulating large amounts of infringement, and then making DMCA compliance easy, but also offering content owners the ability to profit from advertising along side that originally infringing content.

I don't think that model is inherently a bad thing, but it can make life very tedious for users and for smaller content producers so people should know what they are getting into. The history of YouTube monetization has been a total mess for a lot of people, and it seems to regularly go through new rounds of turmoil as they tweak their algorithms or more aggressive content owners join the market.

Re: Pinterest, We Have a Problem

#137

Post by justincormack »

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…

Pinterest should buy Flickr to resolve this, then it would need to copy and would legitimise large parts of its content.

Re: Pinterest, We Have a Problem

#138

Post by zerostar07 »

billpatrianakos wrote: post #104
seldo wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree completely, but there's a double-standard here. What if instead of (mostly) photographs pinterest was mostly video? Then it would be YouTube, and everyone is pretty clear that you shouldn't upload a video to YouTube if you don't own it. Of course, some people flout that rule, but I figure the majority of content on YouTube is genuinely owned by the people who post it, while I very much doubt this is the case…

First off, YouTube's policy is very similar to Pinterest. Besides that, they have different use cases. People aren't posting photos to Pinterest because they want to look at photos or use it as an art gallery. The purpose of Pinterest is very different from that of YouTube. It's like an inspiration folder or a brain dump where you stash things you want or that inspire you so you can look at them in the future. YouTub…

How is it so different use cases? I think an average user would find it very similar. Think, for example, The Oscars photos or the british wedding photos, or AP photos. The only reason it hasn't yet created a stir is because photos are cheaper. Assuming it will gain enough traction, i think pinterest at some point will start some ad revenue sharing programs like youtube.

Re: Pinterest, We Have a Problem

#139

Post by 18pfsmt »

yuvadam wrote: post #3

Oh 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 a good point, but it should not go made without mentioning the fact that we need some standards around TOS/privacy policies. Just like for OSS we have licenses that are "known", we have the GPL (v1,2,3), AGPL, BSD, MPL, APL, etc. Many of us now know how these differ. I started believing in this idea when I first read it purposed in a comment here (i.e.on HN). Standards and git-like-versioning seems the only way to bring transparency to these large, seemingly-opaque corporations.

It might be interesting to put the largest internet companies' TOS and privacy policies on github.

Re: Pinterest, We Have a Problem

#140

Post by treelovinhippie »

I was under the assumption that all social-based sites/companies follow the same policy, not so they can resell user content, but so they can eventually go through an acquisition without facing a class action lawsuit from its users who would demand a % of the sale. e.g. Geocities.
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