Mark Twain on Copyright Law
Mark Twain’s statement to the Congressional Joint Committee on Patents in 1906, on amending the copyright law.
How Pinteresting
I’m currently working on a presentation on copyright basics for information professionals. I also just received my invite to Pinterest, the social pinboarding site. And lo, what should be in the news? Pinterest’s growing pains with respect to copyright.
The Law Library of Congress recently blogged about fair use in the digital age (video of the presentation is here). One of the speakers estimated that 80% of the images online are unauthorized, which “significantly devalues the intellectual property interests of photographers.”
According to its terms of service, Pinterest users are not supposed to use third-party content anywhere except their pinboards, and users are responsible for securing the rights to anything they pin. Flickr has already taken steps to ensure that copyright-protected pictures can’t be pinned.
Are users taking this to heart, or is Pinterest a copyright-holder’s nightmare? PC World has a great article breaking down the issue; it’ll be interesting to see what happens next.
