One of the problems with this innovative and cool approach by the Wall Street Journal to writing about Pinterest by writing about Pinterest on Pinterest (and it is!) is that there you can’t address that, more than early Napster, more than Megaupload, more than any government-seized hip-hop blog, Pinterest is entirely copyright-infringement. It’s just that, unlike with music and movies, there’s no dumb and hostile industry lobby that represents, say, “every photographer everywhere.” If there was ever a place on the Internet that made you think SOPA was a good idea, it’d be right here! But there is, in the Journal itself, a spiffy little paragraph that says that Pinterest has found that being a website based on publishing other people’s photographs hasn’t “been a significant issue so far.” (They also mention the user agreement, which straight-up says they can sell and “modify” “your” “content.”)

Pinterest: Delightful, Addictive, Theft on The Awl, 16 Feb 2012

A little unfair - Pinterest one-ups Tumblr by holding on to the link-to-source when a picture’s reblogged. But nonetheless got to agree with the commenter below - I hate it that people don’t cite their sources properly!

Pinterest proves beyond a doubt that given the opportunity people won’t even do the barest minimum to give money or credit to artists, not out of disrespect, but out of endless laziness.
[comment by deepomega]

Instead of reblogging I’m sometimes tracking down the actual original myself so I can fill out the details properly. Certainly they’re trying to prompt for this - the Help section includes “the anatomy of a good pin” in an attempt to include sources (or just stop them being sued for being slack on copyright). But ideally Pinterest might prompt with two fields: who made it, but also why you’re resharing - making images more social by making explicit the personal reactions, and providing a jumping off point for people to comment and get to know each other.

Though I can see how frictionless / minimal barriers to posting may nonetheless be a better strategy to scale - volume being more important to a start-up than the quality of interactions it generates, whatever the impact of that might be longer-term…

protoslacker:

 Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is a multilateral agreement which  proposes international standards for enforcement of intellectual property rights.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) opposes ACTA, calling for more public spotlight on the proposed treaty.

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has published “Speak out against ACTA”, stating that the ACTA threatens free software by creating a culture “in which the freedom that is required to produce free software is seen as dangerous and threatening rather than creative, innovative, and exciting.

Europe: this is our SOPA, our PIPA. Time to get hasslin’ our representatives (inasmuch as the EU is representative or democratic…)