I dont like Pinterest.
Anyone who knows me knows Ive complained about it since I first learned of it. In my opinion, its business model is based on exploitation of creative works, mostly without the authorization of the creators/copyright owners of the works. All its money has been generated on the back of creatives, few of whom ever get any real benefit from it.
One of the things I do not like about Pinterest is how it not only exploits the safe harbor of the DMCA (takedown process) to protect itself, but also it flips the entire idea of how copyright is supposed to work on its head. In short, rather than making its platform opt-in, it forces creators to opt-out.
Normally, to use (copy, publish, display, etc.) a creative work, first you have to ask permission. If Pinterest wanted to do things in a creator-friendly way, it would have set up its system so that creators could opt-in to have their works (that appear on their websites) eligible to be included on Pinterest. Instead, Pinterest will permit any work to be posted from any creators site onto its site unless the creator blocks her/his/its work or site. Essentially, that is an opt-out requirement. That is dirty pool, in my opinion; its flipping the burden.
Regardless of my personal feelings, that is how it works. According to Pinterest itself, if youd like to block your work, you can do so by virtue of including a bit of code into your websites code. That code is called the no-pin tag. See https://help.pinterest.com/en/articles/prevent-people-saving-things-pinterest-your-site, which says:
If you don’t want people to save things to Pinterest from your website, just paste this code into the <head> section of any page on your site:
<meta name=”pinterest” content=”nopin” />
When someone tries to save things to Pinterest from your site, they’ll see thismessage:This site doesn’t allow saving to Pinterest. Please contact the owner with any questions. Thanks for visiting!
You can also prevent any individual image from being used by (as the page cited above notes):
add this tag to [the single image]:
<img src = “foo.jpg” nopin = “nopin” />
Now, I had no idea until today that there was such a thing as a “no-pin tag.” I’m a copyright attorney and I’ve pursued infringers on Pinterest before, and yet even I didn’t know about this. Crazy. But now I do and that’s why I’m telling you about it, as soon as I could.
I honestly dont know any creative pro who is making money from her/his/their work being taken from her/his/their own site and used on Pinterest. At best, I know of a few who have shot for corporate or advertising clients who then used the work on Pinterest, but they got paid by their client(s) for the license. Pinterest is, I think, a trojan horse of a site that scares people into thinking “I have to let people pin my work so that they see it and I get hired!” but, really, it doesn’t work that way. Housewives in Podunk, USAare unlikely to hire you.
Putting on my marketing consultant hat for a minute, I would never recommend a creative permit work to be used on Pinterest without a paid license. Instead, keep your work on your own site, preferably with a watermark on each work and a proper copyright notice on or next to each work, too. Register the copyright in your works asap after creation. Embed the no-pin tag on your site. Then, if your work gets used, including pinned, without your permission, go after the infringer and protect your rights.