The pinkertons are once again banging at the doors of reason and justice, in today’s post on Pinterest. I entertained myself for a brief moment today, by reading all the ranting and raving about Pinterest’s user agreement.
From what I have gathered, there has been much ‘beating of breasts’ and ‘gnashing of teeth’ from the outraged virtual public.
I’m not sure why people are so afraid of being sued in America. It must be a cultural difference. Here, companies don’t get sued… unless a child is accidently crushed by a runaway brand sign. It’s pretty rare.
And there have been mountains of posts from the blogosphere, scrutinizing every last little sentence in Pinterest’s user agreement. Personally I think pointing out the mistakes of a young social entity is horribly bad luck, and can lead to neither fortune, nor a higher IQ.
Pinterest: will they allow their users to be sued like dogs?
Yet the internet has aired out Pinterest’s dirty pantaloons, for all the world to see. I have to be honest here – I don’t have a Pinterest account yet, but I have been tinkering around on it for the odd client or two.
I think it’s marvellous!
But we’re all missing the POINT. Social media is about sharing.
It’s not about laws, user agreements, copyright infringements, pinkertons or stealing. If you’re going to be a stealer – then you are one already. Using Pinterest can’t make you one.
So here are some rules to sort out the nonsense from the truth.
If you put it on the internet, it’s there forever. Pinterest is not secretly waiting with an image syndicate to sell your face to porn sites.
If your friend posts something there that you don’t like – tough. Grow some lady-balls and deal with it. The end shall not cometh from a bad Pinterest photo.
If you put it on Pinterest it will go viral. That doesn’t mean it’s going to split into a million bacterial atoms and take flight, it means that people will use it, and share it. Isn’t that the point?
Don’t post images on Pinterest you’re going to sell, or offer exclusive rights to images already on Pinterest. It’s silly.
Brutal ‘This is Life’ Stuff Your Dad Should Have Told You About The Internet
If someone is a stealer, and they steal your image without citing the original link, there’s nothing to do about it – but have a cup of tea. My mom says that there’s nothing like a cup of tea to make you feel better about losing valuable backlinks.
Also – WHO CARES. Of course people are going to use your images to get traffic for themselves, this is the INTERNET not a public soup kitchen.
Personally, I wouldn’t even be able to count all the ‘ninchucks’ I don’t give about other people sharing my content. I put it on the net to be shared!
“OMG someone used my picture of a piece of toast with egg eyes, that was in the ‘popular’ section of Pinterest and actually created a blog post about it! I can’t believe they stole my incredible, unsharable, irreplaceable, unfathomably creative egg-eye toast idea! I’ll sue!”
For the love of Zeus people, please don’t be THAT person.
Copyright Bulldangle and Other Lawyer Bits
Lots of the posts out there (in Cyberia) tell you to seek legal advice if you’re NOT sure what to do. Ignore this heinously bad advice and proceed to 9gag.com. You’ll soon lose all sense of right and wrong, and will forget what enraged you in the first place.
Only upload images that you OWN! Sure, and while I’m at it, I’ll stop watching videos I don’t own on Youtube, or clicking on tweets I don’t own on Twitter. Then if I’m up to it – I’ll stop looking at text on blogs I don’t own, and I won’t open windows on internet browsers I don’t own either. We should all do this. That way when the internet dies, we’ll all know why.
Make sure that you upload the link to the source when you pin an image. This one, I’d do because it’s right and because helping people is fun.
Check the source’s link when re-pinning. Like ANYONE is going to do that! If there’s another, identical image with the right owner’s link directly opposite the image that amused me, then I’ll do ‘the right thing’ and repin that one.
Otherwise, the chances that I’m going to spend 5 minutes of my inaccurately important day searching for someone’s original post, is as likely as me – spending 5 minutes of my day not thinking, writing, thinking about writing or writing about my thoughts.
All of this suing and grumbling…go away.
Flagons of tea all round!
What is your view on Pinterest? Have the troglodytes and nay sayers scared you away from your Emmy award winning Pinterest page? Impress me with your hipster commentary.
- Copyhog
