Monday, April 9, 2012

Do You Pin?

It seems like the newest thing in social networking is Pinterest.  Personally I thought it was a great idea.  It was a fun, easy way to save pictures of things I liked or was interested in remembering.  You know how it is.  You see something on the internet and then can never remember where you saw it.  So I joined and started pinning. I even had a few followers.  But the more I got into it, the more something began to bother me.  And it wasn't just some of the semi-pornographic photos that some of my followers had pinned.  I got to asking myself whether we had the right to pin someone else's work without permission.  Remember Napster?  Now I never downloaded music from there but I do remember reading about how the music companies sued 12 year old girls for illegally downloading hundreds of songs.  Or how about sites where cross stitch charts are posted for anyone to download, thus depriving the designer of his or her due.  Don't the owners of the images have the right to not have them spread all over the internet without their permission?  I know you're supposed to link back to the original site but I know I never took the time to do it and I'm willing to bet not many people do.  They just pin the image usually off Pinterest.  Not feeling right about all of this, I deleted all of the images and the boards themselves.  Now if they had private boards open only to the owner, I'd feel better about the whole thing.  I do understand that is supposed to be coming but it's not available yet.  I have also noticed some sites actually have a Pit It button on pictures.  So I've started pinning again but only where it's obvious that it's okay with the owner of the site.   This subject has been bugging me for a long time and I just decided to put it out here for discussion.  I'll get off my soapbox now and you may all return to your regularly scheduled stitching.
 

1 comment:

Cathy said...

That is a good question. I just had a discussion with someone about what's legit and what's not, and we didn't come to any useful conclusions. I hope someone weighs in because there are so many gray areas.
Cathy