When Pinterest first got big, the majority of complaints against the image-sharing network came from photographers. It was too easy for pinners, unintentionally or not, to neglect to credit a photographer’s work and infringe on his or her copyright.
Now, Pinterest and Flickr have teamed up to make crediting photographers automatic.
“Today, we’re excited to announce that we’ve worked with Flickr and other communities to make it easier to pin and credit content creators,” a spokesperson wrote on the Pinterest official blog. “Images with sharing enabled on Flickr now have a Pin It button, and pins from Flickr now have a clear attribution statement on Pinterest.”
Pinterest and Flickr already have a history. In February, as a response to growing concerns about Pinterest’s legality, Flickr allowed users to opt out of having their photos pinned. Visiting pinners would instead see a notice the photo was off limits.
Today’s news only applies to photos from Flickr photographers who’ve opted in to pinning. The automatic crediting system has made opting in sound more appealing, however. In the Flickr forums, commenters wrote they’re excited about the new feature.
Since Flickr is the third largest source of incoming traffic to Pinterest, this partnership is likely to automatically resolve a sizeable amount of copyright violations.
A Pinterest spokesperson told the Daily Dot that Flickr is just the tip of the iceberg. The feature will also roll out automatic attribution from several other social networks, regardless of whether pinners found them on the network or not.
“The update ensures that content pinned from Flickr, Behance, Vimeo and YouTube will receive a clear attribution statement under the description of each pin—even if it is pinned from a third-party site,” she said. “The attribution statement cannot be edited, and will include a permanent link to the work, its author, and where the original content is hosted.”
Pin Etiquette says that crediting your source is simply good manners. It looks like good manners are now mandatory.
Photo by Pinterest