Hi,
Some thoughts from the Scandinavian perspective: I am following this discussion with great interest since I am also keeping an eye on Pinterest. The whole idea of Pinterest is scrap booking. Most of the users (they're not the early adopters) don't really have a clue about copyright, and the site is full of copyrighted images that create wonderful visual mood boards. This encourages even more sharing and building upon other people's (and museum's) images. 

Thank you Nick for great advice! I would add: Don't add code snippets to disallow pinning. Image "theft" happens all the time whenever new services come around. See this as an opportunity to rethink image policies and especially make sure the terms of using your images are as visible and clear as possible. And make sure your free images are as available and useable as possible.

Regards
Kajsa Hartig
Nordiska museet, Stockholm
Sweden




-----Ursprungligt meddelande-----
Från: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] För Nick Poole
Skickat: den 21 februari 2012 12:25
Till: [log in to unmask]
Ämne: Re: Pinterest and copyright

Hi Tim, 

Many thanks for raising this - there was an interesting discussion of the same question on twitter a few nights ago. 

I think we can ill-afford to miss out on the tremendous opportunities for marketing and audience engagement which services like Pinterest and platforms like Tumblr can offer. In case anyone missed Tumblr's 'Ugly Renaissance Babies' (http://uglyrenaissancebabies.tumblr.com/), I can think of no better way of making Renaissance paintings relevant and interesting to audiences who are simply not attracted by curatorial depth.

Whenever anyone has asked Collections Trust about the rights issues with collections images in the past year, we've given the same advice, which I share here. 

You can't afford to give everything away, nor can you afford not to participate in the movement to open up data. As a rule of thumb for your museum you should:

- Identify the 10% or so that is solid, bankable repeatable and significant income for your museum and pay a lawyer/work with a partner to ensure that you own and control the rights

- Identify the next 10% or so that *might* be income-generating at some point because of particular merit and ensure that you have documented it well enough so that you could shift it into category A if the need arises

- Identify the 80% or so that isn't ever going to make you money, and license it for open re-use so that it can serve as your entrée to the benefits of mass-participation and linked open data

If someone pins one of your 'category A' images on Pinterest, make a decision - it either undermines your income-generation, in which case you need to ask them to take it down (but be aware that a takedown request runs the risk of being seen to be a corporate ogre), or it doesn't, in which case you need to make sure that the link back to source is stable so that you can benefit from the traffic. 

We need to get comfortable with the rules of this new operating environment and avoid either throwing the whole baby out with the bathwater or missing out on the tremendous benefits of the social graph. Lawyers are naturally risk-averse, but in my limited experience getting the most out of any emerging platform means having some appetite for risk.

All best, 

Nick 


-----Original Message-----
From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Tim Trent
Sent: 21 February 2012 11:06
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Pinterest and copyright

I've been looking with some consternation at Pinterest, a site that allows folk to wander at will over the web, "pinning" pictures to their accounts. It's hailed as some sort of social media wonder toy. The picture is grabbed, published on Pinterest, and yes, a back-link to your site is created, a sort of quid pro quo for unpermissioned grabbing of your copyright picture. And yes, t takes the picture and lodges it on Pinterest. http://media-cdn.pinterest.com/upload/152207662376192781_Tt59L5pq_f.jpg is a picture of ours I experimented with myself. Note the url.

That made me consider Copyright. In a nutshell, Pintertest relies on users not to break your copyright and relies on your noticing in order to issue take down notices.

Today my attention was drawn to this: http://youtu.be/g3bmdE2BrmM (apologies if youtube is blocked in your office, your IT folk really need to get a grip. It talks about code snippets we can add to sites where we disallow pinning.

What are your thoughts on Pinterest, copyright, and your site?


Tim Trent - Consultant
Tel: +44 (0)7710 126618
web: ComplianceAndPrivacy.com - where busy executives go to find the news first

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