Today I logged in to to my email account to see that Pinterest had deleted one of my pins. Copyright infringement is one of the biggest drawbacks of using this fast growing social networking site. Pinterest like, Facebook, strips identifying EXIF data from images as they are uploaded to the site making it difficult to track down original works. Users must rely on the accuracy of the description field to supply all searchability.
Pinterest’s corporate copyright policy states:
Pinterest (“Pinterest”) respects the intellectual property rights of others and expects its users to do the same. It is Pinterest’s policy, in appropriate circumstances and at its discretion, to disable and/or terminate the accounts of users who repeatedly infringe or are repeatedly charged with infringing the copyrights or other intellectual property rights of others.
It appears that Pinterest is making moves towards protecting copyright owners’ rights. Here is the body of the email I received:
Subject: Sorry. We had to delete one of your Pins on Pinterest.
Hi PinTalk,
This is to let you know that we removed one (or more) of your Pins as a result of a copyright complaint. The complaint was not directed against you or your Pin. It was directed against another user who Pinned or re-Pinned the same content that was uploaded by a user. The Pin identification number is 395753885975579719. It was pinned to the board “> Healthy Living and Homeopathy” and it had the description:
natural remedies
While many copyright owners are happy to have their content Pinned on Pinterest, we recognize that some do not want their content to appear on Pinterest. Where, as here, a copyright owner notifies us that they want their content removed under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”), it is our policy to remove the allegedly infringing Pin, as well as all other Pins that contain the same content if the copyright owners so choses.
Again, this complaint was not directed at you, or anything you did. We just thought you’d like to know why we removed your Pin.
Happy Pinning and thanks again for using Pinterest.
The Pinterest Team
Pinterest DMCA #ID 1635560054