... the thought that pops into my mind is that if you signed up for the analytics - which doubtless would be interesting to know.

would you effectively be giving them permission to use your images and thus excluding yourself from potentially taking action against them in the future regarding image rights.

Pinterest Web Analytics -- will give site owners insights into how people are interacting with "pins" that originate from their websites

You get to see how content that has been scraped is performing somewhere else that is completely out of your control.

I have to echo what topr8 says. Using their analytics may validate their existence. Thanks, but no thanks.

@andem, many many businesses are benefiting greatly from Pinterest period. The tool will be very helpful.

If you have a business account you are automatically signed up for analytics. You can see most pinned, most clicked, most re-pinned, visitors, reach, impressions. Click through to your site.

many many businesses are benefiting greatly from Pinterest period. The tool will be very helpful.

And other business are suffering because of the stolen content...

@chrisc1963

You are implying that if one business is benefiting, its at the expense of someone else's business.

If that is not what you mean, tell me which type businesses are suffering? Examples please?

Yes this continual harping on about Pinterest image scraping is getting a bit tedious.

Either sue them or just get on with it

(I suppose they also hate Facebook because it threatens their privacy or they might sell their data and they also think Adwords is the only way to promote your website)

I could not care less about who uses my images.

Its all good publicity.

I could not care less about who uses my images.

Because they are not what your business is based on..whereas the businesses of artists photographers and illustrators is precisely that ..and they ( like you ) do not all live in the USA ..so how can they sue pinterest without dropping everything for maybe afew years whilst pinterest with all it's retainered lawyers drags it out til they go brake..

Don't like people complaining about others stealing their work ..don't encourage it, don't condone it..it isn't you they are stealing from..so how dare you say it is OK!
It does not give "publicity", any more than a burglar telling his mates that your house is full of stealable stuff that would look good in his mates houses is good for you..they wouldn't come to buy it from you..they'd just steal it..

What is "tedious" ..or to be honest "outrageous" is those who don't create images...telling those who do ..how great having them stolen is ..

Don't most proffesional photographers put watermarks on their images ?

Yes..which offers some protection from theives..
But has absolutely nothing to do with webmasters who do not make images condoning the behavior of websites stealing images ..and calling the complaints of the victims of such thefts complaints "tedious"..

Presumably if someone could reach across the pacific and steal your stock, or maybe just cross the road and do so ..you'd say it was good for publicity ..and presumably it has your label somewhere on it..but it would still have been stolen..and those who create images would not be telling you to shut up about the theft when you complained..

Especially if you were saying "Hey! I can see where the people who stole my stuff have put it, but it is in a big USA corp's window, and ther lawers are saying I have to go there and take them to court to get back what is mine, and they'll allow others to keep stealing my stuff every time I make new stuff"..

I suppose its best if we get back to the topic of this thread.

Obviously as Pinterest are very highly ranked traffic wise they are going to want to start making some money.

I could not care less about who uses my images.

Inquiring minds want to know: What is the original source of your images? How much of your own time and effort went into the preparation of each one?

It's all good publicity.

On the principle of "There's no such thing as negative publicity"?

Serious question:
How can pinterest tell when a pin leads to a genuine physical visit to the image's hosting page? Thanks to their ingenious harvesting code, we ourselves can't tell.

If you are asking me.

I invented, designed and patented my product
And I get them produced by a contract manufacturer
I took all the photos myself
And I edited them in Photoshop myself.

In every thing I do I am a self taught amateur. (and it probably shows)

But if this image scraping as you call it is such a problem have you written to Pinterest ?
Have you got any Photographers Associations to write to them?

And can we get back to the opening topic of this thread.

Obviously as Pinterest are very highly ranked traffic wise they are going to want to start making some money.

How can Pinterest make money when they don't know whether or not the content on the page is copyrighted/stolen? They should switch to thumbnail images only, linked to the web page with the original full size image. At that point ads on Pinterest might be acceptable.

8 or 9 photos that took 30 minutes to set up are not equivalent to 100s or 1000s of hours spent producing each high quality illustration..
Or fine art landscape or travel photos that require traveling 100s or 1000s of Km to get to the spot ..and maybe days of waiting for the lights and clouds etc ..

Or very very many similar scenarii..

They should switch to thumbnail images only, linked to the web page with the original full size image. At that point ads on Pinterest might be acceptable.

Requires a little "fix"..:)

They should switch to thumbnail images only, linked to the original website's web page with the original full size image. At that point ads on Pinterest might be acceptable.

Lest they try to take a Google images search "alternate image theft" route..

[edited by: Leosghost at 11:09 pm (utc) on Mar 12, 2013]

8 or 9 photos that took 30 minutes to set up are not equivalent to 100s or 1000s of hours spent producing each high quality illustration..

I have no idea what you are talking about so why not give me a link to some of you work and to a Pinterest page?

1,000 of hours that is half a year!

Mine took me a lot more than you say as it took me ages to get the right set up and lighting, plus buying about 3 lots of lighting to find one I was happy with. But I take your point.

But I take your point.

Good:) so now we can move on..

Hopefully with no more remarks to those of us who have been professional image producers for decades, and who are having them stolen by pinterest, ( via it's crwod sourced IP theft "business" model ) et al, about it being "tedious", when we denounce theft of our IP..

link(s) ? ..No..My visitors/customers know my stuff ..there is no site in my profile..I do not need the "publicity" ..

However had you asked in a thread in the Graphics forum, about lighting for product photography..I or one of the many other pro and or skilled amatuer photographers here could have advised you ..and saved you buying 3 rigs..only pros need that much lighting gear..and even then , there are ways to do most photographic ( even studio ) work with way less..:)

re "open an analytics account with them"..No way!

Any company as sleazy as to use their business model of crowd sourced IP theft, will at some point try to point to such accounts ( possibly in court ) and say ."They must have agreed to our use of the images , they opened an account to track them"..

Like a "fence" telling you that you can open an account with them, and they'll let you see what happened to the stuff that was stolen from you..but they are not going to stop sending others to steal even more..

Btw..although watermarking does help prevent some image theft..it is very much like having to "key" the side or even the bonnet ( hood ) of your own car so as to prevent it being stolen by thieves who like cars with nice paint..

People should just not steal images..and companies should not be able to be set up to be knowingly 99% repositories of stolen images..

If the USA can go after Megaupload for hosting stolen material..why can't they go after pinterest..

Oh.. I forgot.. Pinterest is a USA company..that shares VCs / backers with some very big USA companies..like Google, ehow etc..

The primary difference is whether you've got images of a product, or images in their own right.

Option Three, I guess, would be a product that is intrinsically beautiful, though it is not bought for decoration. In that case people might post, hotlink or pin pictures of your product ... but it wouldn't affect sales of the product. People who deal in antique furniture, '57 T-birds and so on might want to weigh in at this point. Does pinning help you, harm you or have no effect?

Tangential question after "D'oh!" moment
Does pinterest really use some kind of devious code? Or do they simply send a forged referer?

I went back to check with one filename I happened to remember. The referer is the specific page, not just your domain, although the domain name alone would be enough to get you past most anti-hotlinking rules.

Maybe lots of the pics on Pinterest are taken by the members of their own stuff ?

Why don't you start up a separate thread on this subject and let those of us who want to use Pintest see what they are doing new.

Maybe lots of the pics on Pinterest are taken by the members of their own stuff ?

Either you have never looked around there for more than 5 minutes..those of us whose stuff gets stolen.. have spent / spend many hours searching there, hours which we should not have to spend/ have spent..looking for our stolen works..

Or ..you may be interested in this bridge I have for sale.. :)

What are pinterest doing new? ..nothing ..they only do one thing, crowd sourced IP theft..which even if they put ads around it ..will still just be crowd sourced IP theft..with ads around stolen IP..

Which brings me back to my comparison between them and megaupload..and the rhetorical question.. why does the USA government close one down..and not do the same to the other ?..

I don't want to look around for things that have been stolen.

I just want to see how Pinterest can help my business.

You could not be bothered to show me your work or links etc.

You are becoming a bit paranoid.

I gain nothing at all by showing you or anyone else here my work..or links to it..not paranoia ..privacy..

Many of us here do not show links to our sites..That does not change whether or not our work has value..nor does it change that pinterest is crowd sourced IP theft..

If you want to see how pinterest can help your business.. fine..that does not require or necessitate, that you make comments about the "tediousness" of comments from others who are trying to protect theirs from it..and to forewarn those, other than, ( but possibly including yourself ) who may be reading.. against it..

[edited by: Leosghost at 1:17 am (utc) on Mar 13, 2013]

Well it does when just about every post in this thread is about stolen images other than the original topic which I came in here to read about.

But if this image scraping as you call it is such a problem have you written to Pinterest?

I just want to see how Pinterest can help my business.

Exactly. That involved 30 hours researching the problem, writing letters AFTER 72 HI REZ images were pinned, which resulted in 7 visits from that site. Watermarked or not(mine are), what good is it for me to have them scrape my content?.. Oh it's popular... cause Martha seen it on Pinterest? dont think so,

That TAMRON SPA AF90mm /2.8F Micro was about 600 beans, plus the Canon body 1200, + lights and ++++ Time.

6 Month = 72 Images on Pinterest, mostly by 4 people(IP tracker says competitors) = 0 Beans.

One says Publicity, #*$!. Entire Biz Model is based on IP infringement. Goog does it is no excuse either, we went that route already. Remember LOCAL Queries where One sees based on their location....

Digmen1..
You could have tried staying polite and not commenting on the comments that you don't like..rather than being impolite and condoning IP theft by calling it's victims comments "tedious"..

blend27..<=another of those of us who make images .precisely..

And pinterest offer to show the original image creators whose works get stolen..who on pinterest is passing around the stolen goods and re-pinning them!

Real life equivalent= "we'll let you see what the person who stole the stuff from your house ( and stored it in our warehouse ) is doing with it, who they are showing it to, who has seen it, ..and that will encourage more of the people who visit our warehouse to come to your house and steal more ..some say, you should be grateful for the publicity, ignore the theft, and certainly don't mention it, doing so is "tedious"..

just about every post in this thread is about stolen images

Hardly surprising - this is a webmaster forum.

From Pinterest:

The Pin It Bookmarklet lets you grab images and videos from around the web and add them to your Pinterest boards. Just click the button when you see something you want to pin!

Seems pretty clear.

they are going to want to start making some money

That is the problem.

...

Anyone who doesn't like having their images pinned could add a code snippet to their web pages which prevents pinning.

It wouldn't stop the problem, but it would certainly slow it down.

Source: [help.pinterest.com...]

No Pin Code

We have a small piece of code you can add to your website(s) to prevent pinning. Copy the snippet of code below and paste it into the <head> section of any page on your site.

<meta name="pinterest" content="nopin" />
When a user tries to pin from your site, they will see this message:

"This site doesn't allow pinning to Pinterest. Please contact the owner with any questions. Thanks for visiting!"

Advanced No Pin Code

You can customize the message to users by adding description to the meta tag:

<meta name = "pinterest" content = "nopin" description = "Sorry, this user does not allow pinning" />
You can also disallow pinning of a single image:

<img src = "foo.jpg" nopin = "nopin" />

In a perfect world something like this would not be needed but in a perfect world you wouldn't need a lock for your front door either.

---------

In some niches, Pinterest can be a significant source of traffic. One of my clients puts sharing tools on every product page and they've had tens of thousands of visitors from Pinterest so far this year. Pinterest traffic converts at a lower rate than the site average, but they do buy things.

Using code supplied by pinterest ..is like the house burglars "fence" ( receiver of stolen goods/"brains" behind burglar gang ) saying if you put my card in your windows..my guys/girls will not take your stuff, see how helpful I am"..

In a perfect world something like this would not be needed but in a perfect world you wouldn't need a lock for your front door either.

In a world with any kind of respect for honesty and ethics..no one would think it was OK for the "brains" behind the burglar gang to tell you that if you don't put up a notice specifically for his gang not to take your stuff, that they can ..and that you should accept that..just because some people and their clients make money out of having their stuff on display in the stolen goods warehouse..

They'd be on the side of the honest folk whose stuff was getting stolen, and trying to get the 99% stolen goods warehouse shut down..

incrediBill and others already gave a few ideas for blocking pinterest et al in previous threads..( non exhaustive list )
[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]

[edited by: Leosghost at 3:40 am (utc) on Mar 13, 2013]

Edit: Overlapping Leo here-- see timestamps!

In a perfect world, you wouldn't have to retrofit your entire home, adding a new type of lock to every single opening, including ones that have worked perfectly for years and would not have been due for maintenance for another decade. Fine for those of y'all who do it all with an Include file.

I just detoured to look at pinterest's Terms of Service page. They do something that is-- in principle-- very helpful: alongside each dense paragraph is a smaller one headed "More simply put". So you can home in on the bits that interest you. Would be nicer of course if some of the "simply put" passages weren't simplified to the point of insulting the reader's intelligence.

Oh, wait. Our target audience is middle-aged housewives, right? They're dumb anyway, so nobody will ever notice.

For example:

More simply put:

If you post your content on Pinterest, it still belongs to you but we can show it to people and others can re-pin it.

More simply put:

Copies of content shared with others may remain even after you delete the content from your account.

More simply put:

We respect copyrights. You should, too.

The adjoining full paragraph contains two separate links, both marked in red "copyright policy" although inexplicably one leads to /copyright * while the other leads to /trademark.

I really hope nobody hereabouts has the brazen gall to object to this third-party link:

[about.pinterest.com...]

Is it just me, or is their logo just too 1958 for words? Matter of fact, I think I've got that font. Wonder if they'll stomp on me if I use it.


* Some folks may be amused to note that although the link says "/copyright" without trailing slash, the page you end up on is "/copyright/" with trailing slash.