Have you taken a few minutes to read up on PINTEREST?
Their terms of Use are a little crazy and totally unfair to both user and copyrights.
There is a good article Pinterest: Change Your Terms or We’re Leaving, with links to more good articles at the bottom. Take 5 minutes and read.
Maybe it's just because I majored in PR/Journalism, and took some copyright law classes. Maybe it's because I produce work that I want to be paid for and think others deserve the same courtesy. Or maybe it's because I don't want to inadvertently want to be stealing (yes stealing).
But these articles have left me thinking and reconsidering my account. I really like Pinterest, but if I'm doing something wrong, and hurting other people, even if I really like it and it's a great tool, I shouldn't be using it.
At first my reasoning was this: I pin things I want to do, make, read about or buy. It helps bloggers, or other content producers drive traffic to their blog and that makes them more money, which is ultimately what they want to do, right?
Well, I started to realize I read less blogs and spend less time on websites. I share without their permission, and people (me included) can knock-off a project, article or other thing just by looking at the picture and not even visit the site. Many pins include the recipe right in the pin. And this does not help the blogger. It's great if a project reaches 5000 pins and everyone visits her site, but only sees the one project and doesn't ever visit a sponsor, it's defeated her purpose and only given her 5 second fame. Not cool anymore.
I honestly try to visit every website that I pin. In reality, I open a dozen or more tabs and hardly get to the them all. Which begs the question, if I can't even look at all the sites, are all the new things to do really helping me? Am I accomplishing anything or wasting time, or just giving myself more to do?
Oh the anguish! What are your thoughts? Are you reconsidering your account? What has swayed your decision?
P.S. Protect your kids and family blogs from unwanted exposure! From Pinterest's Help Page
What if I don't want images from my site to be pinned?
We have a small piece of code you can add to the head of any page on your site:
When a user tries to pin from your site, they will see this message:
"This site doesn't allow pinning to Pinterest. Please contact the owner with any questions. Thanks for visiting!"
You can do this on Blogger by going to the Layout Page and clicking edit HTML. Continue and paste the phrase under where it says Head. It's about 1-2 paragraphs from the top. Good Luck!
