Saturday, March 24, 2012

Who pinned my cheese?

Hello folks,

Today I received an email from Pinterest about its "updated terms of service". What caught my eye was this change :

Our original Terms stated that by posting content to Pinterest you grant Pinterest the right for to sell your content. Selling content was never our intention and we removed this from our updated Terms.

Those of you who have Pinterest accounts, were you aware that you had given Pinterest THE RIGHT to sell your images? Because I didn't. Was it written in tiny font? This is such a big lesson. Seriously. We have got to read every Terms of service we agree to. Speaking of which, did you guys read the Google's new Terms of Service? I did not. I have no idea if I've signed away my kidney!

Just to be sure I'm updated on Pinterest's current "Terms of service", I went thru' it with an eagle eye and I'm very disturbed by a few items. You can go here to read it.

1c. How long we keep your content.
I read this portion a few times and the conclusion I get is this. Even if you delete your account, or you delete your images, Pinterest continues to keep your images for an unspecified period of time. Further more, if anyone has repinned your images, they continue to exist for an unspecified period of time. Am I right? Did I misinterpret? Is my England not so powderful?

8. Indemnity
Okay, reading the indemnity portion terrifies me. The gist of it is this - I pay if Pinterest gets sued for something I post that infringes any copyright. All the big words basically covers all the different kinds of costs that you have to fork out. There's no mention about repinner's indemnity tho'.

I think I'm pretty safe when it comes to pinning. I've only pinned 3 kinds of images. My own, free tutorials from non-litigious bloggers I know and books I want to buy. From day 1, I've never gone crazy pinning everything in the net mainly because I did not want to bother to ask the owners for permission. I wonder how many pinners actually ask for permission.

So, am I IN or am I OUT of Pinterest? I think I'll keep my account but before I pin anyone's images, I'll make sure they're okay with it first. And if you want to keep your blog a NO PIN blog, you can go HERE to get the code.

All these ugly talk about Pinterest is kind of depressing. Now, let's check out a couple of striped bags I made.


This big slouchy bag I've made before HERE. This one I made a little smaller. Not everyone has long arms like mine.


This crescent bag is now a favourite of mine. It's very hard to photograph though.


When I looked at this bag, I thought it has this rather disapproving look (look at the zipper mouth) - probably over the unfair terms of service organisations impose on users.

And just in case you guys want to pin anything from my blog, please go ahead. I'm HERE at Pinterest. All I ask is that you ensure the LINK points back to the post it came from.

Just in case you don't know what I mean....
If you click on the title of any post, the url will point to that post.
e.g. http://projectsbyjane.blogspot.com/2012/03/blue-chocolate.html

If you click on my "Projects by Jane" header, the url will point to my blog url.
http://projectsbyjane.blogspot.com/

See the difference? The rule of thumb is to pin from a specific post.

Lastly, don't pin images that I do not own. You can tell they're not mine because I would put the source.

Hope you're having a good weekend!

3 comments:

Suzee said...

I deleted my Pin account last night. I read on another blog I follow about the terms and I too, did not read that little print lol I think mainly that Pinterest is covering their own behinds with the terms. maybe? I will do it the old fashion way and book mark what I like and print out what i want to keep.(tutorials)
I LOVE the black and white bag!

Dee said...

I too hadn't read the fine print. I used to red them all and they were all so similar and blah,blah blah so I stopped reading them.
I am disappointed to read the strange conditions. I really find it convenient - like a scrapbook of images and ideas. I will be careful with how I use it. I tend to only pin where it will take me directly to the site of origin so that I can acknowledge the originator.

Bags - love the look of that black striped one where the stripes go in both directions.

tamdoll said...

As soon as I got wind of the Pinterest TOS, I deleted all my pinned items... but I still like to look at the pins of people that I follow. In a way I'm glad not to have another time suck on the internet. Even if they change their terms some more, I'll probably stay away.

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