

Pinterest posts new Terms of Service - kennu
http://pinterest.com/about/terms/

======
vannevar
The front page of Pinterest looks like a Ladies Home Journal exploded. I'd
venture to say that 90% of the content is third party content used without
permission. The only saving grace is that most of it is commercial images from
ezines and retailers who will benefit from the traffic and so have no
incentive to sue. But eventually it seems like there will be repercussions.

On the other hand, when a sizable population of middle-aged women become the
pirates, maybe our elected officials will be less inclined to set the dogs on
them. Could Pinterest be a watershed moment in the copyright wars?

~~~
itssynecdoche
The content on Pinterest almost always leads you back to the source site. I
doubt that comes under pirating.

Or am I missing something?

~~~
dminor
Crediting the source doesn't mean it automatically falls under fair use.

Pinterest's ToS state that you cannot pin material if you don't have copyright
permission. Of course, this is probably a large percentage of what gets
pinned.

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sthatipamala
I couldn't figure out what changed from this page, so this is from their email
to their users:

We'd encourage you to read these changes in their entirety, but we thought
there were a few changes worth noting.

Our original Terms stated that by posting content to Pinterest you grant
Pinterest the right for to sell your content. Selling content was never our
intention and we removed this from our updated Terms.

We updated our Acceptable Use Policy and we will not allow pins that
explicitly encourage self-harm or self-abuse. We released simpler tools for
anyone to report alleged copyright or trademark infringements.

Finally, we added language that will pave the way for new features such as a
Pinterest API and Private Pinboards.

We think these changes are important and we encourage you to review the new
documents here. These terms will go into effect for all users on April 6,
2012.

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nullflux
TLDR:

Pinterest is getting lots of criticism from press on specific issues and they
are editing them.

* "pro-ana" (anorexia) pinboards containing "thinspo" (pictures and sayings to reinforce anorexia) were featured in a Jezebel post. Pinterest clamped down and said they won't tolerate self-harm. See:

[http://jezebel.com/5893382/the-scary-weird-world-of-
pinteres...](http://jezebel.com/5893382/the-scary-weird-world-of-pinterest-
thinspo-boards)

* You need copyright permission to post something to Pinterest but virtually nobody has permission, so they added better takedown methods. See:

[http://www.npr.org/2012/03/22/149169388/pinterest-wades-
in-m...](http://www.npr.org/2012/03/22/149169388/pinterest-wades-in-murky-
copyright-waters)

* Pinterest is adding private pinboards and an API.

~~~
newman314
That NPR article doesn't really say much.

Pinterest added the nopin meta tag but that's absolutely the wrong approach.
The onus should not be upon the copyright owner to police violations (after
the fact).

Also, while Pinterest may be a fast growing site, it's still just a startup
and the hubristic assumption that the rest of the Net adopt it's nopin tag
just does not make sense.

I would say Pinterest needs to start from a point of not violating copyright
rather than try to brush it off onto their users _and_ not providing stronger
tools to prevent such events from happening.

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blahedo
I really, really, really wish that anyone posting updated TOS (and similar
contract-y documents) would include a diff with the old one.

~~~
Kudos
Tumblr host their terms of service in a Git repo on Github.

<https://github.com/tumblr/policy>

~~~
jedberg
Reddit keeps theirs in a wiki:
<http://code.reddit.com/wiki/help/useragreement>

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orofino
I have a Pinterest account merely for seeing the application and having some
vague understanding of how it works. Being an account owner, I received the
email notification for this change, which is omitted from this link.

    
    
      Our original Terms stated that by posting content to Pinterest you grant Pinterest the right for to sell your content. Selling content was never our intention and we removed this from our updated Terms.
    
      We updated our Acceptable Use Policy and we will not allow pins that explicitly encourage self-harm or self-abuse.
     
      We released simpler tools for anyone to report alleged copyright or trademark infringements. 
    
      Finally, we added language that will pave the way for new features such as a Pinterest API and Private Pinboards.
    

I thought they did a nice job summarizing and convey in a concise,
understandable way, the changes they've made.

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jhaile
I get that pinterest has to get their legal mumbo jumbo in order so that they
limit their liability, but practically speaking it's a total joke. Everyone
knows that the majority of content "pinned" on the site is done without
permission. Personally - I don't care as long as it's linking back to the
source. Same as Google image search in my book. Legally speaking...eh, I don't
care - I'll leave it to others to discuss that.

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tkahn6
How do these issues of copyright infringement not come up immediately during
the formulation of the business plan?

Is the idea to get big really quickly and deal with the legal issues at that
time?

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ak39
And there I got happy thinking there was a explicit ban on pictures of shoes.
:(

