PINTEREST
THE PINTEREST LOVE TRIANGLE
Pinterest.com is the newest visual social networking website on the block, seen by some as the next Facebook. But, for many brand owners— particularly those in the fi elds of fashion, home décor, lifestyle and food— the network poses as many threats as it does opportunities. Helma van de Langenberg explains why it’s important to pin this website down.
Remember when you had a scrapbook? You collected favourite recipes, nice interior images or dress designs, cut them carefully from magazines and glued them to the pages. With Pinterest you do the same, only online. T e social scrapbooking site allows users to build ‘mood boards’ (visual collages) of favourite and inspiring items from the web and organise them by topic or trend. Users can then share those mood boards with their friends, eff ectively building a social network by allowing users to share ‘pins’ and ‘re-pin’ the items they like on their own mood boards.
Pinterest was launched in 2010 and its recent rise has been spectacular: a year ago there were
around two million users; currently, there are more than 20 million active users. T at number is still rising, making it one of the fastest-growing social media platforms ever.
For a brand owner, the opportunities are
considerable. Many companies are already using the site to generate traffic to corporate websites, to market new products, to strengthen their relationships with customers, to communicate with fans and to keep on top of consumer trends in their industries. Some have even incorporated ‘pin’ buttons into their websites in order to make it easier for users to ‘pin’ images on their mood boards. But, along with these opportunities, come a number of threats to intellectual property rights.
“UNTIL LEGISLATION CATCHES UP, IT WILL BE IMPOSSIBLE TO RECONCILE THE NEED TO PROTECT THE WORK OF CREATORS WITH THE CONCEPT OF SHARING VIA THE INTERNET.”
Copyright concerns
Pinterest is a fun and inspirational website, but the majority of images used on it are taken from the web without authorisation. Generally, they are ‘pinched’—in other words, used without the consent of
the creator
with their source uncredited, infringing the owner’s copyright and, potentially, inviting disputes.
Although Pinterest provides users with the functionality to infringe copyright-protected content and a forum in which to showcase it, the website has covered its liabilities well
30 Trademarks Brands and the Internet Volume 1, Issue 3
T e user; T e copyright owner (creator); and Pinterest.
As in a true love triangle, there is jealousy and sometimes hatred between the rivals involved and it seems that the parties can’t live
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by, for example, providing copyright owners with a notification scheme. This is common practice for websites which enable content sharing and, effectively, grants it a ‘safe harbour’ from infringement claims under European copyright laws.
In addition, the website’s terms and conditions place all liability for copyright infringement on the user’s side. But, few consumers fully understand—or respect—copyright law, and even fewer are likely to sacrifice the content of their mood boards due to the distant possibility of an infringement claim. Similarly, while users may be violating the owner’s copyright, they are doing so for fun and pleasure, so most creators will think twice before enforcing their rights due to the potential cost and negative publicity that such actions may invite.
Love triangle T ere are three parties involved in this matter.
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