Pinterest - beware of what you do

[tilt]

As this is a place for many artists I thought you might find this article interesting. Basicly its about how pinterest covers its ass ... with yours.

http://ddkportraits.com/2012/02/why-...ration-boards/

I've posted a few maps myself but also pinned other peoples stuff and one thing I hadn't noticed was that pinterest makes a full scale copy of the image pinned. I looks like the whole idea of how pinterest works might be flawed in respect to copyright legislation.

[Clercon]

...or is it copyright that is flawed in respect to how the world (Internet) works

[Redrobes]

Yup when a lawyer doesn't understand the law you gotta worry. What it basically means is that posting up other peoples work on the web is illegal without the permission from the copyright holder. If pinterest themselves (as opposed to other forum members) are saying that they don't like people posting up their own content (for self promotion) then they could well be in some hot water. Otherwise, yes its you the poster who is responsible for the actions of your posting.... at least that is so long as this ACTA stuff is not implemented which makes all web site owners (and possibly the ISP in some drafts) liable for the users posts. So long as the website removes copyright infringing material within a reasonable period after being notified then they are ok. This is why YouTube stuff is taken off line all the time. They do not necessarily check who is the owner of material when a report is made. Hence this week a guy walking in the woods with birdsong was taken offline from some troll who claimed copyright on the birdsong. Now if the site is posting links to the material then it ought to be alright... except when it isnt. A reference to something illegal is now being treated as illegal by the USA. This is why the pirate bay are changing links to torrent files over to another format. The links to torrent seeds are not in themselves breaking the law but they are being treated as illegal anyway by implication of being an accessory. The US are pushing ACTA globally and the UK, France and most of EU are signed up but some of the member states have woken up a little and now there has been some resistance to it. The issue of course is that with this google and most websites like this one are now illegal. ACTA breaks the whole internet and its the usual arbitrary policing of it as to whether you stay online or not or have your domain seized ala Megaupload etc.

So if you think thats bad. Its just one of a million complete screw ups in the area of copyright law. Were rapidly approaching a copyright law meltdown. Clercon has it nailed !

[tilt]

I definitly think the copyright should be worked over and adapted to the new millenia - but as it is, we have to work within the existing rules :/

edit: didn't see redrobes post as I forgot to refresh after having some lunch
As people who have me on fb and g+ knows I'm against ACTA, PIPA, SOPA and any other 'PA they throw out there. I believe that hollywood is breaking the web in their attempt to hold on to an ancient way of doing things instead of waking up and changing as the world changes. A recent post on TED said it well by starting out by talking about a bakery who no longer accepted to print cakes that people had made themselves cause they had gotten sued by Disney (or something to that effect). We also have the story of a totally personal non-commercial videoclip of some kid on youtube that "infringed" on copyright cause there was music playing in the background. Most of us who like Star Trek might also remember the lawyers hunting down fanpages in the webs early years... *shakes head*

What pinterest is doing is saying one thing while their "rules" say something else - and following up by making sure that its peoples own responsibility for getting permissions even though their whole pinning/sharing system isn't really focusing on permission but rather the ease of sharing = They are greedy and don't care who they hurt.

[Redrobes]

The cake baking story I actually agree with Disney. There was a shop making custom cakes and they took requests from people and made the cakes to order and sold them. People often used to ask for cakes with Disney characters on them so they made them with their characters on the cakes and sold them. Basically they sold Disney IP even tho it was a mom and pop shop. But rules should apply both large and small. I don't think that there was any case for a fair use when your selling stuff like that. There is a case to say tho that copyright should not have been extended just to allow Disney to keep the very old B&W Mickey Mouse vids still in copyright when their term should have expired.

The other one was a kid who was dancing in a you tube vid with Prince track in the background and prince is very defensive about his works and employs lots of lawyers to sift the net for his songs. Now in that case there was a fair use since the song was somewhat incidental to the vid clip and it was non commercial. Prince got a lot of stick for that.

You say we should stick within the rules but thats not possible. With a $150,000 fine per work uploaded and this site, or more precisely Arcana, being the stop buck and with no requirement for anyone to be informed about the upload, its possible for an IP rights holder to get an anonymous upload of his work and then turn around and sue this site. This is exactly what has been happening since with the data dump of IP addresses from the Megaupload case, it was noted that many of them were from the MPAA and related cronies. As one person said this week, patent litigation and copyright infringement are now just costs of doing business instead of fines. You cant avoid them any more. This is all being done to brush aside free or low cost software, art and IP so as to push out the small vendors out and leave the field free for the big guns to monopolize it.

[tilt]

ok - I heard that it was the customers that provided the art so I'll "back down" on that cake

and no, not saying that we should stick with the rules - I say that because the rules are there we have to abide by them, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to change them. In respect to pinterest I'm saying that since they protect their own asses (but don't really tell us about it) one should be carefull what one does (as goes for most of the web) so you don't end up on the wrong end of a lawsuit. Especially since many people thinks that "fair use" might protect them but that just isn't always the case. Copyright is strongly flawed and MPAA and the like have lots of money to spend on lawyers and they only want to change the rules to be more restrictive. In addition they lobby like there is no tomorrow :/
Especialy "concept" and "idea" copyright is damaging for development as I'm sure you, as a programmer, agree with. A lot of small businesses don't have money to check if they are infringing on some obscure patent somewhere in a box. A classic case is the one-click-buying Amazon has - which is basicly a customer database ... and the fights between cell phone developers ... oh.. you made a square black phone.. we own that... not to talk about companies trying to patent a color. *shakes head again*

[Redrobes]

I don't think it would matter if the customer brought in the image to make the cake from. The cake maker is still part of the selling of it. Only if they made blank cakes and the customer took it away and put a disney char on it would I think that the cake maker is out of the picture.

As for the rules, I dont know what to think any more. I dont think its possible to stick to them so I think we all just say screw it and do it anyway. You and I are lucky in that we both are in countries that don't support patents on software but that's an area which is so perverse you would laugh if it didn't affect you. Yeah, I recall Hutchinson Telecom changing its name to Orange and then claiming ownership over anything electronic and orange. Or like MS using Paint and Word and Calc and other generic names and saying that these applied without the use of a prefix of Microsoft or when Microsoft starting leaning on people using the term windows for everything including sheets of clear stuff for looking through. Luckily that one was quashed. But Lindows had to change its name because of it. Then there was this only two weeks ago..

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/201...rs-lee-patent/

I dunno where it can go from here. Everything is so completely FUBAR now. The law IMO is such a complete joke.

[tilt]

wow... lot of head shaking and jaw dropping disbelief going on. My thoughts about this was mirrored in one of the comments - taking it to its conclusion. They win and start wanting money from webpages - webpages all move to non-US countries like europe (if they can stay away from software patents) pages get blocked by the us for not complying etc etc ... the web in the US ends up nutered.

and you're totally right we're beyond FUBAR (if you can be that... would that turn things back to recognition? *lol*) and our damn politician should do something about it instead of keep catering to the mayor industries. LIke in Denmark a few years back there were a discussion about this in the government - they called in the industry and only one representative for the "users" - which was a person from consumer rights organisation which is governmental run.... sigh

[bartmoss]

...or is it copyright that is flawed in respect to how the world (Internet) works

Eh, let's not start THAT discussion please.

But what worries me is how many people still don't get even the basics of copyright law. I can sum it up really quickly for you:

Don't use anything unless:

1) You made it yourself for your own use (not as a work-for-hire contract for someone else)
or
2) You have express, written permission by the creator to use it for that specific purpose.

There. Done. That's really all there is to it. Of course there are many exceptions, but that is the gist of it.

I am not a lawyer, this ain't legal advice.

[bartmoss]

Post Scriptum, as this is one of my pet peeves...

COPYRIGHT covers the expression of ideas: Text, images, photos, sculptures, music yes even architecture. Pretty much everything someone creates is under copyright.
PATENTS cover ideas. Specifically, inventions. Not every idea or invention is patentable, but checks and balances don't work too well.
TRADEMARKS cover the use of words, phrases, or logos to identify a product, service or company. Trademarks have to be actively defended or the owner risks losing the mark.

Please at least get your terminology right, guys.