Tuesday’s Tech Take: Pinterest & Copyright

Pinterest and copyright is complicated. Really, really complicated.

I mean, as if Pinterest wasn’t already a sensation enough, this whole copyright debacle makes it even greater, in the sense that its Napster-like resemblance is fitting, as well as another reason to jump on its bandwagon. To engage in copyright infringement yourself, while the fun of it still lasts.

What’s interesting though, is that for a digital generation, (that typically doesn’t care about hard copy, physical print images) this is suddenly such a big deal. I didn’t think at least, that there was still a lot of money to be made across the whole of photography. I thought that was only for wedding and senior portrait specialists. Just like how I thought photography was like Journalism, in the category of dying occupations, art and so forth.

Apparently, however, I’m quite wrong on this.

If third parties are going to start lawsuits over images on Pinterest, will the site’s limited time frame of just being a new, exciting, and uncorrupted social platform be the shortest of all its predecessors? I won’t lie, it wouldn’t be surprising, given how fast even brands have embraced it.

Facebook, Twitter, MySpace. All of those guys had years before they were altered from pleasing their fans first to prioritizing corporates and advertisers. The fact that Pinterest is no exception to this shouldn’t come as a surprise, but it should be interesting to see how these copyright issues evolve because content has already spread like wild fire. Who can clean up the mess already made and further, should they?

As PC World highlights,

The root problem is that Pinterest’s core concept is about repurposing third-party content, which is supposed to be properly licensed, attributed, or paid for before being pinned. But users simply aren’t going to take that extra step.

I just hope this doesn’t end like Napster, where we’re left with iTunes and have to pay to look at and share photos.