Worried about Pinterest?

I've recently had discussions with two fashion brands about the copyright issues around Pinterest, so I thought I would do a post about it. If you are looking for a much more legal opinion, just Google it and you'll find plenty but this is my take on it.


The whole concept of Pinterest is predicated on grabbing images from around the web and pinning or re-pinning them to your board, some of which may be copyright (indeed most will). Of course if you are taking photos on your phone and pinning through the Pinterest app, copyright issues do not really arise.

Pinterest have worked hard to tighten up their terms and conditions and make sure they are in line with the Digital Copyright Millennium Act; a huge piece of US legislation which seeks to stop the illegal digital dissemination of copyright works.  Importantly, Pinterest have now made available an 'opt out' line of code, which allows site owners who do not wish to have their content pinned, to be able to block pinning from their sites. But it's interesting to note that even the world's largest picture library, Getty Images, (a highly litigious company) who you would think would be extremely sensitive about the pinning of their images, hasn't employed the code (at the time of writing) - I think that tells you everything.

On the basis that there hasn't been one fully-fledged legal action taken against Pinterest to my knowledge, or any 'pinner', it would seem the legal issues have been over-hyped. Imagine the negative publicity and the wrath that would ensue from the millions of Pinterest members if a company did take legal action - most organisations will work very hard to avoid this. 

When you pin, it creates the source the pin came from and a link to that site, so it's not as if images can be used anonymously. It's why online fashion retailers particularly like Pinterest as it's driving traffic to their site, indeed it's why most site owners are happy to have their images pinned because it leads to more publicity and site traffic.

In their terms and conditions Pinterest also have a take down policy, so if a copyright owner complains, an image will immediately be taken down.

Most fashion brands obviously own the copyright of the images they would be pinning, so there is not an issue over this and the more people who re-pin these images the better.

I think it's interesting if you look at Ralph Lauren who are very 'leading edge' in the social space (they have 5 million Facebook likers), they are active Pinterest pinners and have boards for all their product categories. 


So my advice is keep pinning, just make sure you have good terms and conditions on your brand website, which you should have anyway, on copyright and use of images. And be prudent about what you pin.