How do I stop people stealing my images on Pinterest?
Pinterest is a KNOWN traffic driver, with statistics and companies raving about the benefits of being on Pinterest and delivering amazing results. But there is an ugly side to Pinterest too. As a blogger, using Pinterest to drive traffic to my site, I see so much spam it can actually be depressing.
Looking for copyright information for instagram? Check this post instead
How do people steal your pins or your posts?
Spam is everywhere and those that steal content are everywhere too, many of those are out to make a quick buck. So therefore; things to look out for are:
Looking for your images
Use some of your pins and click on the image search, if the links on the bottom of the page is yours then they are your pins, however if the link is redirected, this pin has been stolen.
This usually happens when a spammer sees a popular/ viral pin and wants to use the work from this to drive traffic to their fake site.
Check your website traffic
If a majority of your traffic is derived from Pinterest check that your normal traffic isn’t taking a huge dip – this will usually indicate that a pin has been stolen and redirecting that traffic.
What does Pinterest say about copyright and copyright infringement?
If you want to read more about the terms of service you signed up for on Pinterest, read those here. But we will summarise it below;
Posting content: Pinterest allows you to post content, including photos, comments, links, and other materials. Anything that you post or otherwise make available on Pinterest is referred to as “User Content.” You retain all rights in, and are solely responsible for, the User Content you post to Pinterest.More simply putIf you post your content on Pinterest, it still belongs to you.
Pinterest Terms of Service
You can see that Pinterest is very clear that the images, and work you create are yours and very much so, your intellectual property.
They then go on to talk about how Pinterest themselves and others can use your property:
You grant Pinterest and our users a non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable, sublicensable, worldwide license to use, store, display, reproduce, save, modify, create derivative works, perform, and distribute your User Content on Pinterest solely for the purposes of operating, developing, providing, and using Pinterest. Nothing in these Terms restricts other legal rights Pinterest may have to User Content, for example under other licenses. We reserve the right to remove or modify User Content, or change the way it’s used in Pinterest, for any reason. This includes User Content that we believe violates these Terms, our Community Guidelines, or any other policies.
Pinterest Terms of Service
They then further elaobrate this with the following statement:
“We respect copyrights. You should, too.Intellectual property and other rights
- To respect the rights of people on and off Pinterest, please:
- Don’t infringe anyone’s intellectual property, privacy or other rights.
- Don’t do anything or post any content that violates laws or regulations.”
How can you report a stolen pin and what should you do?
This has some of its own interesting issues; there are a number of ways but the most simple way is to make sure you use the Complaint form.
This is what Pinterest Says about the complaints:
In keeping with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which you can read at the US Copyright Office website, we’ll respond quickly to claims of copyright infringement on Pinterest that are reported to our designated copyright agent, identified below.
If you’re a copyright owner or authorized to act on behalf of one, you can report alleged copyright infringements on Pinterest by completing the DMCA Notice of Alleged Infringement and sending it to our designated copyright agent.
When we get your DMCA notice, we’ll take whatever action we think is appropriate, which may include removing the reported content from Pinterest.
If we remove content in response to a DMCA notice, we may notify the person who saved it on Pinterest so they have the opportunity to send a counter-notice. We may also send a complete copy of the notice to others, as appropriate.
Pinterest Terms of Service
You could also POST the DMCA which really just blows my mind, but you can send it to this address:
Pinterest Copyright Agent
808 Brannan Street
San Francisco, CA 94103-4904
Fax: +1 415 762 7100
Email: copyright@pinterest.com
What should I do if my account has been blocked because of spam content from stolen pins?
This can feel really stressful, losing access to your account, being blocked, having your site blocked completely. There are a couple steps you can take to solve this.
Pop an email through to creators-support@pinterst.com; what seems to help is if you email this a couple of times, explaining the situation and that you are the owner of the account. This might take a couple of goes before you are able to get your account reinstated.
