CRIMINAL OR SOCIAL?

A few weeks ago I became aware of Pinterest.  I know, a bit behind the curve, but I have made up for it by spending hours pouring over pictures and recipes and laughing out loud at some of the stuff posted there.

The concept of Social Bookmarking was new to me.  You see stuff on the web and instead of saving that page to your computer favorites to refer to later, you bookmark it to one of these sites.  In the case of Pinterest, you pin it to one of many boards you can make, each titled as you like. You can also see what others have pinned to their boards and like it, comment on it or repin it to your own boards.

Pinterest has a variety of interests represented, but there are also social bookmarking sites out there for men (http://manteresting.com/) where the images are not pinned, but nailed - so manly.  Sites also focus on fashion, design, gadgets and porn.  Why am I not surprised, and no, I didn't look at that one.

So, another fun, time sucking thing to do online.  Because you realize after a bit that you want to add your own actual stuff to the boards, not just look and repin.  Doing that, my mind starts working as I am looking around for images to add.  Is this okay, legally and all?  For my little blogs read by a mere handful of folks and not monetized, I tend not to worry about using images from the web even though I know that legally I should be purchasing or getting permission to use them. 

The reality is that there is limited legal use allowed of the images owned by someone else and Pinterest knows that. When you sign up, if you read the fine print, they put the legal risk on the pinners/board owners to have permission to use the images.  In reality, I am not certain why someone who has allowed their images to be put on the web would be angry that they are embraced and being used on a social bookmarking site, but there may be a situation where that  happens.

The best way around this issue to to not use these sites. 

The second best way is to give full credit to the owner and publisher of the images, linking directly to the original source so that others are able to go back to that source and purchase from or otherwise benefit that source. 

That is how I plan to proceed as I spend hour upon hour looking at sumptuous images of dream homes, travel destinations and garden projects, fashion I could never wear and recipes I might give a try.