A little over a month ago
we wrote about the new Internet craze call Pinterest which claims to have over 10 million users. In our story we linked to a blog post by Sean Locke where he explored the copyright infringement issues.
Recently Kirsten Kowalski, an Atlanta based portrait photographer and a lawyer who is also General Counsel for a Georgia company examined the Pinterest terms-of-service from the perspective of a photographer. (Ms Kowalski does not specialize in copyright law.)
In her blog
post she concluded that as a user she was at risk of “being sued, AS THE INFRINGER, and then being liable for indemnification and defense costs and ALL damages.” Much as she likes the Pinterest concept she has deleted her pinterest inspiration boards.
For those who want a better understanding of this new threat to copyright.her analysis and
follow up article after an interview with Ben Silbermann, founder of Pinterest, are worth reading.
Allen Murabayashi, CEO of Photoshelter, takes a slightly different position on his
blog. He examines Pinterest from the point of view of “whether [it}can act as a business tool to drive revenue.” He concludes that it is probably not something photographers should be overly concerned about, but in general it is not a place where photographers should spend their time trying to market their work.
He did point out
in a separate post that Dallas-based wedding photographer Jessica D’Onofrio uses Pinterest successfully to “collect inspiration for brides after they’ve hired her.” If she is showing her own pictures for this purpose that’s not a problem. If she is pinning the pictures of other wedding photographers to give her brides ideas that is probably technically an infringement.
It seems that the primary issue for photographers is how they earn their revenue. If they earn money from licensing multiple uses of their images Pinterest may cut into their market. If their revenue comes entirely from the people who hire them to take pictures then the existence of Pinterest may not cut into their revenue, but it may be a time waster as far as marketing is concerned.