The Musings of Meg

An interesting read on the pending legal issues with Pinterest. As a pretty frequent user of this new social channel, it’s an interesting comparison to the Napster phenomenon that happened over a decade ago (wow I suddenly feel old). I’m not completely convinced that it’s the same situation, mostly because I think there’s more money to be made off of music than images, but regardless it’ll be (p)interesting to see how this story unfolds.

To read the full article, click here.

But users should read the terms and conditions, because they indemnify the company from any problems that might arise in connection with the items its users pin. “Their lawyers say you can’t pin anything that you don’t own … but the site is saying you can. It’s very confusing to users,” Kowalski said. “The quick version of the law is [that] you can’t use someone else’s stuff,” she said, conceding that hers is a very basic interpretation. ”But there are exceptions.”

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Some of the issues include whether pinning copyrighted photos that are easily found on the Internet constitutes “fair use” if the images’ creators are credited or if a link goes back to the site of origin. “Huffington Post built an entire business around taking entire snippets of content and linking back across to it,” said Charley Moore, founder and executive chairman of online legal service RocketLawyer.com. “On the other hand, if you have taken 90 words out of 100 in the article, that is probably not OK.”

*apologies for the pun, couldn’t resist! 

Incredibly, yet another free site has become white-hot popular, because it’s found yet another purpose not quite served by anyone else. It’s Pinterest.com, which recently laid claim to being the fastest Web site in history to break the 10-million-visitors-a-month threshold. It’s suddenly cropping up in conversation, online and off, with surprising frequency.

Pinterest is a pinboard for online photos. Multiple pinboards, actually, each an individual page in your Pinterest account. You can make one for Cool Craft Ideas, another for Kitchen Redo Concepts, a third for Places to See Before I Die. Or maybe Books I’ve Read, Ideas for the Wedding, Best Web Comics. The sky’s the limit.

For the full article, click here.