Friday, February 24, 2012

Pinterest and Copyright Issues – Tips to Follow

Posted by Leah Ludwig


I recently read an informative and thought-provoking article about “Avoiding Copyright Pitfalls on Pinterest.” Based on the fact that Pinterest seems to be the “it” social media site these days and that many of our readers, including myself, are very active on the site, I thought a synopsis of the tips shared in this article would be helpful for us all.


So as not to leave anyone out, if you are not familiar with Pinterest, you should be. You can get up to speed by reading one of The PR Lawyer’s recent posts, Pinterest: The Visual Phenomenon Of The Internet


Now, back to the enlightening thoughts and tips shared by Saving for Someday blogger Sara, who happens to be a lawyer focusing on online content creation and protection. She spells out some simple, yet easily overlooked, ways to avoid copyright issues on Pinterest. First, as always, Sara cautions all Pinterest users to take time to read the site’s Terms and Conditions. These can be found under Privacy, Copyright and Terms on the site.


Sara’s Tips


- Pin the original source: It’s always a good practice to take an extra moment to verify the source of what you choose to re-pin to make sure that you are repinning something that belongs to the originating site.


- Never copy an image from Pinterest on your own blog: Enough said.


- Don’t perpetuate the wrong owner: Make sure to accurately attribute any images that you may be using in your blog – it is not only frustrating for your reader, but even more so for the original owner.


- Watermark your images: This may take away from overall look of your image and may be a bit challenging for the average blogger, but since Pinterest does not crop images your watermark will remain and you will always receive credit as the original image owner.


Many sites are now adding a Pinterest “Pin it” button on their website to ensure that their information is being shared accurately and efficiently via Pinterest users. However, if you are really concerned about your images and copyrights being infringed upon, Pinterest just released code to keep images from being “pinned” on a site at all. 


I hope these copyright tips and tactics make you think twice about pinning that great recipe or re-pinning that amazing infographic to your Pinterest profile the next time you hop on the ever-so-popular social media site.


Photo courtesy of: tennesseefederalcriminallawyerblog.com

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