Do you belong to Pinterest? If you do than you legally agreed with this statement:
By making available any Member Content through the Site, Application or Services, you hereby grant to Cold Brew Labs a worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, royalty-free license, with the right to sublicense, to use, copy, adapt, modify, distribute, license, sell, transfer, publicly display, publicly perform, transmit, stream, broadcast, access, view, and otherwise exploit such Member Content only on, through or by means of the Site, Application or Services.
As a photographer I am the SOLE copyright owner of any photograph I take. I grant "RIGHTS USAGE" to all of my clients. My clients have the "right" to use my photographs for any and all purposes related to the promotion of their business or brand. Sometimes my clients join forces and receive a "multi-party" rights usage of photographs, i.e. the Architect and the Designer. What I DID NOT grant is the right of "COLD BREW LABS" to "adapt, modify, distribute, license, transfer, SELL, stream..."
That is called copyright infringement, period.
So now what do we do? I want all of my clients to get as much publicity as possible from the photographs I am contracted to provide. I want my clients' to Blog, Facebook, Tweet and promote themselves through every available channel, whether print or digital.
BUT, I cannot and will not allow "Cold Brew Labs" to profit, NOR should YOU!
Social Media, has brought more designers together than at any other moment in time. I am only ONE voice, but together we can VOICE our sentiment that Cold Brew Labs start taking copyright infringement more seriously and amend their contract with it's users.
Because the only difference between Pinterest and Napster is Napster was the illegal sharing of millions of copyrighted songs whose copyright owners where few. Pinterest is the illegal sharing of millions of photographs whose copyright owners are in the millions.
For more on this issue please read:
http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/blog/startups/2012/02/pinterest-copyright-issues.html
Please share this post with anyone!
Warm Regards,
Michael
Copyright Michael J. Lee Photography All Rights Reserved 2020 (Interior Design: Amy Meier)
3 comments:
Right On!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Michael, I am so glad to hear your point of view. It seems that EVERYONE is on the Pinterest bandwagon - I myself reluctantly joined, but am trying to find images that were pinned from my blog and properly credit the original source (photographer/artist/interior designer) in the comments field of the pinned image.
I actually was shocked to hear that Ben Silbermann was a speaker at the Alt Design Summit (Blog conference), because I too (as you) struggle with how it it possible for Pinterest to "allow" photographers' and magazine images to be pinned and distributed - it feels like a total violation and copyright infringement.
I am passing along a link to this post to Grace Bonney - because I had read that she had brought up this issue with Ben and also at Alt.
Thank you very much Cecilia! I look forward to meeting you on Wednesday!!! As you and your blog are true to the ethics and demeanor that true journalists are bond by!
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