
Meta name="pinterest" content="nopin"  - franze
http://blog.pinterest.com/post/17949261591/growing-up/
======
staunch
It seems pretty obvious that Pinterest wouldn't qualify for safe harbor under
the DMCA.

> _Direct Financial Benefit:_
> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_L...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_Liability_Limitation_Act#Direct_Financial_Benefit)

The entire service is reliant on the ability of users to "pin" copyrighted
images from across the web.

> _Knowledge of Infringing Material:_
> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_L...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_Liability_Limitation_Act#Knowledge_of_Infringing_Material)

Anyone with any objectivity can see that 99% of the images on Pinterest are
being used without permission.

It also seems that Pinterest themselves are "uploading" all the images to
their servers. Users just tell Pinterest which images to take. Technically it
would be no different if YouTube were to store/serve Netflix videos after a
user "pinned" them.

~~~
marknutter
I think it's a sad state of affairs when people are using a site to show other
people their favorite stuff and are technically breaking the law by doing so.

~~~
downx3
But you can understand the scrapbook motivation though can't you?

~~~
downx3
Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. Ignoring the legalities - the motivation is
that people like to collect and share things of interest.

Sites like pinterest are probably more alluring and easier to use than
compiling and sharing a list of URLs with your friends.

------
xelipe
I would hate to have to add a meta tag for each services...

    
    
      meta name="googlebot" content="noimageindex"
      meta name="facebook" content="nolike"
      meta name="tumblr" content="noreblog"
      meta name="twitter" content="noretweet"
      ...

~~~
downx3
That's the first thing I thought of when reading the article.

You can't expect each website owner to know every online service available on
the web!

What's a better way to deal with this then? Embedding copyright notices into
your images? Having a COPYRIGHT.TXT file?

~~~
eru
Some extension of the ideas in robots.txt could help.

------
newman314
I'm sorry but this is ridiculous. Pinterest might be a "hot" startup but it's
still a gnat in realm of business. Yet I'm seeing reports praising Pinterest
for being proactive.

The onus is upon Pinterest not to violate copyright and not for sources to
have to add a metadata tag to adapt to some startup's business model. This
does not address the situation where an image comes from a service which does
not currently allow you to set the tag (say Flickr) nor does it address what
someone has to do when another startup with a different model comes along.

~~~
storborg
> still a gnat in realm of business

That hasn't been my experience on several modest content sites. Across the
board Pinterest sends more traffic than Facebook, Twitter, or Reddit.

~~~
joshfraser
totally depends on the site

------
franze
google obeys the

    
    
      <meta name="robots" content="noimageindex"> 
    
      - or -
    
      <meta name="googlebot" content="noimageindex">
    

meta tag. well, i guess pinterest didn't knew about it and instead reinvented
- an unknown, obscure, niche - wheel, again. (see:
[http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...](http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=79892))

~~~
jackowayed
Showing up in an image index (generated by crawlers) is different enough from
showing up on Pinterest (curated by humans) that allowing one to make the
choices independently is totally reasonable.

~~~
zerostar07
Well at least they should honor that too since clearly the owner does not want
their photos discoverable ( plus by crossing over to pinterest they become
indexable, right?)

------
billnapier
what's next? meta name="browser" content="nolink" to not allow deep linking?
or linking at all? this is stupid.

------
callmeed
Of course you can still open an image directly and pin that.

Why a company would not want their product image and a link back to their site
is beyond me (it's basically free advertising).

~~~
franze
>Of course you can still open an image directly and pin that

well, to counter this scenario pinterest would need to support the

    
    
      X-Pinterest-Tag: nopin
    

HTTP header - for images, PDF, all non HTML data (similar to googles
"standard" X-Robots-Meta: noimageindex, see:
[https://developers.google.com/webmasters/control-crawl-
index...](https://developers.google.com/webmasters/control-crawl-
index/docs/robots_meta_tag))

~~~
ars
As a side note, you are not supposed to use X- anymore.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3539663>

~~~
btn
That is still a draft document, and has not been accepted as a BCP (Best
Current Practice) RFC yet.

------
marquis
I'm concerned this will lead to a number of meta-tags we will have to include
in our ever-growing header tags. Can Pinterest and Facebook not just
acknowledge robots.txt or we invent a new tag like rel=nofollow?

~~~
guan
robots.txt is for web crawlers that follow links, it doesn't usually apply to
robots that fetch a single page based on a user request. But they could invent
and adopt a new tag.

------
robocat
Surely the proper place for this is robots.txt, maybe using something similar
to Google Images:

[http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...](http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35308)

Requiring sites to update their html seems overtly obnoxious (or maybe just
thoughtless!).

------
aristus
I was amazed at how quickly Facebook's og meta tags were adopted by many sites
back in the day; I used to run an archiving/scraping service and it helped me
a lot.

I can't help but think Pinterest should also offer a meta tag for sites that
_want_ um, Pin... interest. Something beyond og:image.

------
jarin
What they really should do instead is either use the Open Graph tags or some
other kind of meta tags (if absolutely necessary) to ensure proper
attribution.

Then, they could take it a step further and use perceptual hashing to compare
images and make sure the original source gets the credit.

------
Tichy
Do they copy the images, or hotlink them? If they hotlink, some evil minds
might come up with other "workarounds".

No way I am going to add some meta tag just for pinterest. Not that I have
anything I don't want to be shared yet, but still.

------
jaredsohn
As noted by a comment on the page, it would be better if they had a more
generic meta name value so that content creators don't have to do the same for
every website that they don't want their content distributed to.

------
rahulcap
This is a smart move. It's much easier to tag your site than issue a takedown
request.

I mean, it probably won't stop copyright infringement too much , but it gives
Pinterest something to point to when people complain.

~~~
huggyface
Why, though, is it opt out rather than opt in? Given the claimed advantages of
pinterest participation, why not have those sites that want to participate add
the meta tag? It seems somewhat backwards to demand that sites that don't want
to participate add a meta tag for a single, specific site.

EDIT: One interesting side effect of moderation on sites like this is that it
actively discourages conversation. I've replied to various questions and,
without fail, when someone asserts their opinion by downvoting this, they need
to seek out and downvote every other post I've made on this topic. Weak sauce.

~~~
chc
They're putting it on the Web. Traditionally, there is assumed to be a certain
degree of permission involved in putting content on the Web unless you
specifically indicate otherwise. If we don't assume this permission, Web
browsers would be just as bad, since they download and cache your copyrighted
content.

(Note to downvoters: If you believe I'm wrong, a response would do a better
job of correcting the misinformation. If you believe I'm posting this is bad
faith, you're mistaken. I really don't see how the Web can coexist with the
assumption "A program may not download resources offered by a webserver
without explicit opt-in permission.")

~~~
TeMPOraL
I completely agree with you. Opt-in means nothing would ever be done in this
world, because everyone would be wasting resources on getting permissions. No
browsers, no search engines, no Wikipedia, no HN, no nothing.

The rule of thumb should be: you opt-in when you put your stuff on the
Internet.

------
LukaD
How about <meta name="pinterest" content="dopin" />? Why would I want to put
additional crap on my site if I wanted to opt out of this? An opt-in would be
much better.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Because then you'd have to opt-in to Google Images, Reddit, HN, and a thousans
other services as well, which of course you won't do, because it's a waste of
time. Opt-in is not a way to go if you want to have anything done in the
world.

------
pbhjpbhj
Isn't this

[meta name="pinterest" content="don't infringe my copyright"]

???

------
rangibaby
When will the IP madness stop?

