How to Protect "User Content" on Pinterest

One of the big questions with the rise of social media and social networking sites is how does one protect themselves online; from being someone who uses someone else’s work wrongfully or having someone steal their work. This is where the issue of copyright and how it is addressed comes into play.

Back in 2012, when the Pinterest app had really taken off, there was a lot of backlash concerning the Terms of Service and how users were protected. In the original terms it stated that as a user posts anything they were granted Pinterest the right to sell their content. As you can imagine people were not happy with this. Ben Silbermann and the rest of the Pinterest team understood there were issues and sent out an email to all users explaining how changes were being made.

In the (updated) Terms of Service, section 2 discusses content in more detail. Anything a user posts, likes, comments on…  is known as “User Content”, this is where the user is solely responsible for what they do on Pinterest. So simply by posting something on Pinterest, the user does not give up any ownership rights  (2012). The interesting part is what comes next. As a user, you grant Pinterest a “non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable, sublicensable, worldwide license to use, store, display, reproduce, save, modify, create derivative works, perform, and distribute your User Content on Pinterest solely for the purposes of operating, developing, providing, and using the Pinterest Products.” This is how Pinterest and others can use your content. Essentially, others can take your original posts to create nice pinboards; they just cannot sell it. But how is this idea any different from sharing a picture on any other social networking site? The more times a post is shared should be considered a good thing, as it popularizes it. However, if it something involving a trademark, it is important to get permission prior to posting anything, especially because Pinterest is not to blame in this kind of situation (2012). Like likelihood of a normal user getting mad is way less than an actual company who has the ability to sue (2012).

Pinterest is a place to get ideas and to be creative. As an active Pinterest there have been many times I use it to look up recipes or decorations for a birthday party, and my attempts to “copy” the original turn out as such a fail!  There is a whole community online of users who try to recreate a post they saw on Pinterest and it looks nothing like it. “Nailed it”, is the Pinterest term for failing at a recreation. This is a prominent example of how a Pinterest user can use another users content in an acceptable way.

Here is a little tip to help protect yourself: Give credit wherever you can to the original source! (Hansen, Nowlan, Winter, 2012)

Works Cited 

 No, P. D. T. O. W., & Post, Y. (2012) The copyright question" How to protect yourself on Pinterest.

Hansen, K., Nowlan, G., Winter, C. (2012) Pinterest as a tool: Applications in academic libraries and higher education. Partnership: The Canadian Journal of Libraries and Information Practice and Research, 7(2). doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.21083/partnership.v7i2.2011

Lui, D. (2015) Public Curation and Private Collection: The Production of Knowledge on Pinterest.com. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 32(2), pp 128-142. doi: 10.1080/15295036.2015.1023329