Flickr Gives in to Pinterest, Enforces Attribution

There has been quite a lot of talk about Pinterest and copyright issues emerging from people sharing content over this fresh and very popular social network. Flickr even started out by adding a “do not pin” code to protect the rights of their users. But apparently they have changed their mind and just added a new pin button on Flickr pages which allows for easy sharing on Pinterest and makes sure the proper attribution accompanies the photos uploaded by their users.

Not only is it easy to pin photos directly from Flickr, the same process applies to Flickr photos embedded on third party websites. Once such a photo is pinned, the attribution will be automatically transferred. That of course works if the website owner has used Flickr’s sharing code to begin with. For other ways of embedding the photos, well, Flickr users will have to rely on… common sense.

As the pin button will be displayed with the other sharing options – Twitter, email, Facebook and Tumblr, if you pinning is your game, Flickr will prioritize this channel when displaying your sharing possibilities.

However, not all photos will be Pinterest-shareable. According to Markus Spiering, Flickr head of product at Yahoo, content owners are the ones who will decide if their photos can be pinned or not. Photographers using Flickr can choose not to allow Pinterest sharing at all, or to make sure they are the only ones who can further share their work on the social network.

While good news, the whole hype about Pinterest and copyright is extremely amusing at times. Everyone is so worried about pinning and copyright infringements, but taking a closer look to it, Pinterest has in no way generated new issues. Just randomly check Facebook, see how many photos are uploaded without mentioning sources at all!

The truth of the matter is that common sense of those sharing is what most of us can rely on to ensure no damage is done. And common sense is not always something that’s easy to find.