What every copyright owner should know about Pinterest

Pinterest is a great way to highlight your own products, encourage others to do the same and to build a following by sharing your passion for your sector. Perfect, no? Suzanne Dibble from Lawyers4Mumpreneurs says Pinterest's ease of use may be encouraging people to play fast and loose with copyright - and yours could be under threat. Here's her advice for protecting your copyright on Pinterest.

A relative new kid on the social media block, Pinterest is growing quickly, with rating figures suggesting that UK traffic increased almost 50 per cent between December and January alone, writes Suzanne. Perceived as being particularly attractive to women, the attraction of the site is obvious: users can create virtual 'pinboards', grouping together images and other content under their own profile, then sharing them with their followers. Pinterest's terms and conditions require users either to own, or have obtained the right to use, any content which they pin. One estimate, however, is that 99 per cent of pins don't comply with this requirement. Should you worry if your content is being copied without your knowledge or consent, or without linking back to you as the original source?  The consequences are potentially serious: you lose control of how your images are seen and presented, risking real damage to your brand.

What can you do?

Pinterest offers two tools for copyright holders to use: -

• 'Pin It' button. Added to your website, as with Twitter and Facebook buttons, this acts as a kind of virtual permission slip and means that if your customers pin your content to their boards, your details and description go with it. On the site's Goodies page, there are instructions and a video tutorial on how to install the 'Pin It' Button.

• 'Opt out'. Within its Help section, Pinterest have now added a line of code which website owners can use to block their content. Anyone trying to copy content which has been protected will receive the message: "This site doesn't allow pinning to Pinterest. Please contact the owner with any questions. Thanks for visiting!"

If your material is already on Pinterest without your consent and you want it to be taken down, the site also offers the option to submit a Copyright infringement notification © Suzanne Dibble  2012

About the contributor

Suzanne Dibble is a multi-award winning lawyer whose experience ranges from advising plcs on billion pound deals to advising micro businesses on their day-to-day business law issues. Suzanne is the founder of Lawyers4Mumpreneurs, the only business law practice in the UK to exclusively focus on helping mums in business, and is also a consultant with Virtual Law.

More on Pinterest and other social media

• Infographic: Should small businesses use Pinterest to market their products?

• The top ten legal issues to consider when using Twitter

• Sharing personal information on social media - How much is too much?

• Video: How to use the Facebook timeline for business

Photo credit: Los Amigos Del Fuego