Pinterest: Sharing or Stealing?

We are all taught from a young age that stealing is bad and sharing is good. When you're little, these rules are easy to apply - swiping Johnny's toy airplane from his backpack and keeping it is stealing, and letting him play with your cars is sharing.

Easy, right?

Well, in the age of the Internet, the line between stealing and sharing isn't quite so clear. In fact, the line between right and wrong, good and bad, legal and illegal can get downright murky, particularly when it comes to sites like Pinterest, where users "pin" images they like, often without crediting the original creator of the image. Some say it's mass copyright infringement. Others say it's "fair use." I say it's a complicated mess.

Why I Still Like Pinterest

Let's get this out of the way first: Do I think users on Pinterest are violating copyright law by pinning the works of others? In many cases, yes.

Do I intend to stop using the site? No.

Here's why I support Pinterest. This is a personal decision based on one semester of mass media law in college (back in the Stone Age before the Internet), several years of online writing, my personal experience having my writing stolen and sold in an ebook on eBay, random personal beliefs about karma and intent, and a dash of toad's breath thrown in for good measure.

This is a fact: People like to share. It's human nature to want to show off the things that you enjoy and think others would enjoy, too. Before the Internet, this sharing was usually limited to a small group of your family and friends. You might rip out an article from a magazine and copy it for your friends to read or make a CD with your favorite songs to give to your girlfriend. That was usually all fine and dandy because it was for personal, noncommercial use and nobody was going to come knocking at your door because you made a copy of a song and gave it to your girlfriend.

Sharing of copyrighted materials was also allowed under "fair use," which allows reproduction of a work for "criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research." The problem with the Internet is that your "close circle" of friends could now be the entire world, and what you share with one group of people on Pinterest can be repinned or otherwise copied from here to China in a matter of minutes. (Well, maybe not China because they could be blocking Pinterest, as they block Facebook and Twitter, but you get the point.)

While "fair use" is a well-established exception to copyright law, the main idea of copyright is to grant the creator of a work the sole right to decide when, how, where and if his or her work is republished. Under the letter of the law, any reproduction of copyrighted work needs to be explicitly approved in writing. In real life, while the creator of any published work SHOULD have this sole right, I don't think it has ever existed completely except on paper, due to the aforementioned proclivity of people to share and the exception for "fair use."

We'd like life to be straightforward in black and white. It's not. It is always shades of gray.

The other long-standing issue that has prevented copyright from being cut-and-dry is the issue of copyrighted work versus registered copyrighted work. Although every piece of published work can be called "copyrighted" simply by virtue of being published, you can collect damages only for works that were officially registered with the US Copyright Office prior to infringement or within three months of publication. Registering your work requires filling out some paperwork and paying a fee. Unless you do that, your copyright really doesn't have much value, other than the fact that you can politely ask people to stop doing what they're doing. Without that all-important piece of paper from the government, you can't sue for monetary damages.

And even if you do have the piece of paper and decide to sue, you might still be out of luck because if the person doing the infringing can show that they really didn't intend to do any harm and didn't know any better (like the majority of Pinterest users, I reckon), the damages can be limited to a paltry $200 per work, which would make the whole idea of suing a moot point for most writers, artists, photographers, etc. unless a single person violated multiple copies of their work.

So does this mean we should all go out and violate copyright laws willy nilly? Of course not. Everyone should try to follow the law and respect the intellectual property rights of others.

So how can I still support Pinterest?

My problem with Pinterest is not that people copy images that others have created. That, in and of itself, is not necessarily copyright infringement. It MAY be copyright infringement, but it is not copyright infringement per se.

A few years ago, a lawsuit was brought against Google for copyright infringement. The court determined that Google could continue to show images (effectively reproducing someone else's copyrighted work) because they were only thumbnail images that linked back to the original site and weren't saved on Google's server.

This is where Pinterest is coming under fire.

Unlike Google, Pinterest is pulling images from the source, hosting them on their own servers and reproducing large images (not just thumbnails) that others could conceivably steal and reuse without the creator's consent. That is the one thing about Pinterest that bothers me - they are hosting larger-than-thumbnail-size images on their servers and making it possible for others to copy them. So the site isn't perfect.

But I'm sticking with Pinterest because I think the IDEA of the site is great, and with a few tweaks it could actually help the people who are now most worried about its existence. I think most people want to share, not steal. They are not trying to break the law. They are saying to the world, "Hey, look at this great thing!" They are trying to promote something they enjoy, which is just the type of reaction every creator hopes for when they produce something new. In short, I think intent matters. I know it doesn't change the letter of the law and some people are going to get upset because I'm simply making an excuse for breaking the law. Perhaps I am.

Remember way back at the beginning of this rant when I said that most of us are taught that sharing is good and stealing is bad? It's really not that simple. While almost everyone would say that smashing a car window and stealing a stereo is wrong, most of us would have compassion for a starving person stealing food to survive. The law still calls it stealing. The law still stays it's illegal. The law is the same, but the intent is not. And to me, intent matters.

Of course, there need to be some changes at Pinterest so it can be a great source of traffic for photographers, artists and the others who now fear it. It could be a great way for these folks to find a new audience that doesn't necessarily hang out at DeviantArt or BigStockPhoto. What I wish Pinterest would do is add a watermark to all images so they can't be reused without the creator's consent, or show only thumbnails or stop hosting the images on their servers and just redirect users like Google Images does. Any of those actions would help protect the copyright owners.

Until then, I hope everyone who creates art, photos or other images online learns to protect their work by watermarking it, only uploading low resolution images or posting small copies that can't be used for much. This won't completely stop people from copying it. But just like it's foolish to leave your wallet on a subway bench during rush hour and complain when someone steals it, it's equally naive to post large copies of high-resolution work online and be surprised when someone copies it elsewhere.

I will also pin carefully and cautiously, always with the intent to follow the law and to support and promote the images I pin. I love this new, high-tech world we've created, and I want to support smart ways of using the tools we have, rather than shutting them down because we haven't yet figured out how they fit into the old rules.