What's all this hula-a-baloo about? A Pinterest post...

I've been hearing lot's of scuttle-butt about Pinterest of late. A lot of it is centred around the issue of copyright (an ongoing and ever present beast in the handmade/ creative world).

Lets just begin with I ♥ Pinterest! I think it's the best thing since sliced bread!. I see it as a way to bookmark things visually as opposed to just bookmarking the URL on your web browser.

Many creative peeps are feeling as thought their work can be misrepresented if an item has been pinned incorrectly on someones Pinterest account.

If you don't know but want to know what Pinterest is and how it works check out the help section over on Pinterest.

The problem from what I can tell, people..

a) don't wish to have things on their blog (etc) "pinned" without their express wishes
b) want to be credited when a pin is made from their blog (etc)
c) wants a correct link through to their blog, instead of only pinning an image associated with their blog post.

The way I see it once you put something on the interwebs you've basically given up ownership of the item. It might not seem fair as me as a designer can understand how much work is put into something for someone to come along and either claim it as their own or copy cat it.

One of the easiest ways of preventing someone using you're photo say put a water mark on it. You can either go traditional photography style watermark, which covers the most crucial part of the image, preventing the image to be reproduced but allowing the viewer to 'see' the image or have a more discrete watermark on the side. This is 'prettier' but is easily cropped out.

It doesn't seem fair but it's a part of the world we live in, and in all honesty, stealing, copy catting, has been happening for many a year, yes even before the invention of the internet. The reason Pinterest has been dragged into this debate is a little confusing to me, is it because it's the site of the moment? I'm sure people have been doing the good old copy and paste shuffle of images, at least with Pinterest (most of the time) the original website/blog is able to be referenced (if an item has been pinned correctly.)

My tip as a "pinner".

Only pin from the actual page, don't view the image on a separate page and pin as it doesn't allow you to link back to the blog. If you do come across an "image only" pin you can track back to the site from which it came by going to the URL address bar, and deleting the address from the right to left until you reach the first .com part of the address.

Play nice, if everyone does their part, the world will be a better place * cue rainbows and bunnies*.

Summing up, don't stop pinning, just use Pinterest responsibly. Be respectful of other artists and creative peeps, do unto others as you would have done to you.

I will leave you with this posted on Pinterest last week from the Link with love blog.

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It seem's there is a way to stop people pinning from you're site, check out this blog to find out how.

If you're interested in reading more about this issue, you can find articles here, here, here. (I haven't read any of these articles, it's just what I've found looking around.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this issue.

Till next time...