Copyright protection

[ChickPea]

I dislike Pinterest intensely and try to avoid it whenever possible. However, they do have a takedown procedure here...

https://about.pinterest.com/en/copyright

Obviously, in Mouse's pic, it's not Pinterest to blame, but whoever uploaded the image. It's easy enough to report unauthorised images, and I would hope there's some sort of 'Three Strikes' rule in place, so vigilance might pay off and the uploader's account is closed. But who has the time to scour Pinterest (or Imgur, Instagram, FB, Photobucket etc etc etc) every day...

[Mouse]

They win, ChickPea. Pinterest require a link to 'the picture on my website'. That means I would have to trawl all the way through my gargantuan Merelan City thread and do over 100 forms for all my maps, just to make sure I got all of them. I just don't have the time or inclination.

They also require you to provide a link to each of the offending pins on their own website, which requires a person to register an account to be able to click on the maps to get the Pinterest page address to fill in the form properly.

Even if I registered an account just to get my maps off their pages (which I absolutely refuse to do because that's like supporting them) there's also no guarantee that the whole lot won't be re-pinned again in a week or so's time by someone else.


It seems that the only thing we can do is just let them carry on making their lists of pretty pictures, if that's what' floats their boat', while ensuring that anything else we produce has a lovely clear name on it somewhere where you'd have to cut the map into a really odd shape to get rid of it. After all, if they are making revenue out of us by using our maps to drive traffic through their site for the advertising revenue, then we can play them at their own game and have our names freely advertised along with our artwork We just have to get into the habit of marking our stuff nice and clearly, and in an attractive way.

Incidentally....

If you regularly browse for reference images and get sick of seeing nothing but a page full of images from Pinterest, you can rule them out of the search altogether by using this handy little string in the search box after whatever term your searching:

[search words] -site:pinterest.com

Voila! No more pages full of nothing but those irritating pins!

Equally, if you want to deliberately look for something on Pinterest you can use this:

[search words] +site:pinterest.com

[Straf]

Copyright only seems to favour the larger corporations. It's too expensive for smaller entities and individuals to enforce. There's something wrong with that.

[Ilanthar]

By Straf
Copyright only seems to favour the larger corporations. It's too expensive for smaller entities and individuals to enforce. There's something wrong with that.

This is so sadly true, alas.
I know I have a lot of my maps on Pinterest too... And a lot are from before I decided to add my signature. At least, there are some users that credit properly.

[Mouse]

We all know there's something wrong with it, Straf. We just have to learn to use it for our own advantage.

Sites like Pinterest use 'the people' (their pinners) to steal our work so that they can make piles of money by increasing the traffic through their own site and making millions in terms of advertising revenue, so lets turn the tables on them, and use the exposure to advertise ourselves at the same time.

After all, they can hardly complain, since they'd lose a hell of a lot of revenue if none of our maps were up there to start with. There are quite literally thousands of fantasy maps from the Guild up there on those boards.

For your free advertising all you have to do is add a copyright notice and a contact address to all your maps - right from the outset.

© Copyright [name], 2017
please go to [website address] for commissions.

[Straf]

Aye but aren't we repeatedly told that copyright is to protect the little man? Much the same as patents.

[Redrobes]

The only way to fix this, and I stress that I dont know how to do it at this point, is to write onto any downloaded image the name of the member which downloading it and also force the max size of any non logged in user to have a max size for the download at a lower res. Then when the images are uploaded we can see which member it is. I have to stress this goes against many principles that I hold dear. We could also bar pinterest from accessing the site via IP address but that doesnt stop its users from getting the images and uploading them. We could add meta data to the image but that can be removed. So only the pixels themselves are something that is guaranteed to stay intact because thats the bit of data that is interesting. Obviously modifying them in a big way detracts from the map / artwork being displayed so its a tough call as to what to do. Relying on the law to protect you is an idiots game unless your already rich. Its been set up that way.

[J.Edward]

And barring pinterest sort of goes against those of us who don't have an issue with this.
Pinterest is no different than any other site where people share things they like, like twitter, or facebook.
Should people here be barred from posting links to anything outside of the Guild?
This issue sort of bothers me a bit.

I actually like that my stuff gets shared around. It helps with exposure and business.
I have gotten work because my work was seen on pinterest.

[Redrobes]

The difference is simple. You are well able to upload your own map to twitter, pinterest, deviant art etc as you wish but your not allowed to take someone elses map and do it.

I dont believe that we should block sites but at the same time, how do you respond to people who do have an issue with it ?

[Mouse]

The simple fact is that you can't stop them.

What I was saying before was that we all need to be double sure that we've got our name on absolutely everything we post - right from the outset.

We could almost do with a sort of introduction page here at the Guild - good advice and tips, and to have the top comment on that page be about how important it is to mark your work - all of it.

I wouldn't be feeling at all sick about all those maps of mine that are pinned all over the place, if only they had my name on them, and I could be sure that no one else would ever be able to claim that they drew them, not me.