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I don't know Pinterest, but why doesn't it use the safe harbor provision of the DMCA, as, I believe, most user-uploaded content sites do? Do they think compliance with DMCA would be too costly for them? Are they a small/big company?



Whether or not Pinterest are protected by the safe-harbor of the DMCA, their terms have you agree to reimburse them their legal fees in defending themselves for any content that you posted. That may not stand up contractually, but I can understand someone deciding that's a risk they'd rather not take.


Also...if you run across a REALLY nasty lawyer...they may point out that the content is not ENTIRELY 'User Uploaded'.

It is 'Pin'ed...but TECHNICALLY, Pinterest is going out to get the content and putting it on their own servers. At least I thought that is how it worked. Does anyone know how pinterest is doing this? Is the content coming from the user, or a third party server that the user instructs Pinterest to reap from?


>Is the content coming from the user, or a third party server that the user instructs Pinterest to reap from? //

I actually joined up, on an old invite, in order to test this point. From a very quick look it seems that basically you can pin, repin or upload.

If you upload then you've clearly had a copy. If you pin then you see a copy of the image in your browser but served on the Pinterest site and Pinterest basically copy that image to their servers in order to present it (you've had a copy in your browser cache but I think all attempts to prosecute for that ran out of steam a decade ago). If you repin then you're looking at content that is already on the Pinterest servers and only appears from them, you can click through to find a source from whence Pinterest acquired the image.

To me this looks really bad for Pinterest. Pinterest make a local (ie on their servers) copy of an image that you pin. If you upload it then clearly you've both made copies. In some respects you direct which images they make copies of but they do the copying.


Surely the reason the browser cache argument fell down is it is a temporary cache to improve performance. How is a server side cache any different?


Browser cache is like keeping the shopping in your trolley as you go around the supermarket. "Server-side cache" is stealing the stuff from the Supermarket to sell in your own shop. If you decide to retain something from your browser cache, without acquiring a license, then you just shoplifted it.

[Before anyone says it I'm absolutely not equating copyright infringement and theft].


I am not sure this will work for them if courts decide that their very modus operandi is to encourage widespread copying. Peer to peer companies argued that they weren't copying, just providing a platform and that others were 'abusing' that platform, not them. But I believe the reason they were wiped out was that the whole way they conducted their business effectively promoted such abuse. I suspect it wouldn't be hard to argue that against Pinterest.




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