The New York Times says that Pinterest has 18.7 million unique users. Some say that Pinterest has 104 million users. Regardless of what the figure is, most, if not all, Pinterest users are pinning other people’s content. The question arises- are users breaking copyright laws by pinning the content of others?
An article providing some guidance on the topic can be found here. Some lawyers in that article suggest to stick to pinning your own content or content that predates 1923 (when copyright no longer applies). If people followed this advice Pinterest would not be in business.
More realistic advice is provided by Pinterest itself, which posts copyright guidelines for its users. Pinterest recommends providing proper source or attribution to the pinned item, and in doing so, it may be sufficient to avoid any possible copyright violations. It should be common sense that if you see a warning or a sign that the material you are about to share is copyrighted, and it does not contain social media buttons for sharing it, you should not disseminate it. However, if a copyright violation occurs, Pinterest removes such item from its website.
And for those who do not want their content shared on Pinterest, they should install Pinterest code within their website, which will prevent Pinterest users from pinning that web content on Pinterest.
May 10, 2013 at 3:15 PM 
May 9, 2013 at 9:51 AM 
May 8, 2013 at 4:06 PM 
July 10, 2012
Business Law