<story><title>Pinterest, We Have a Problem</title><url>http://whatblag.com/2012/03/07/pinterest-we-have-a-problem/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>js2</author><text>Recently, I wanted to make some picture postcards of various locations around the US for personal use, so I went looking for images. I found many on Flickr. I wanted to compensate the original photographer. There is no easy way to do this.&lt;p&gt;At best, some photographs have a &quot;request to license&quot; link that bounces you to a third party (typically Getty Images) which offers to &quot;Review the photo to determine if it&apos;s a good fit for licensing through us; Contact the photographer; Handle the details like releases and pricing&quot; and takes &quot;between two and seven days to arrange licensing.&quot; with prices typically around $100 for usable resolution for a postcard.&lt;p&gt;At worst, you have to sign in to Yahoo so that you can send the photographer a message about wanting to use their photo. You may or may not get a reply, and you have to arrange how to pay the photographer, if at all.&lt;p&gt;This may make sense for images which are to be used in a commercial context, but for personal use like how I wanted to use the images, it&apos;s way too expensive and much too much friction.&lt;p&gt;The vast majority of images will never be used commercially. There should be an easier way to remunerate the photographer, and at more reasonable prices. A &quot;Pix Store&quot; if you will. Maybe that&apos;s what the stock photo sites are supposed to be, but they don&apos;t have nearly the inventory.&lt;p&gt;Sorry for the tangent.</text></item><item><author>OneBytePerGreen</author><text>Pinterest has a market valuation of &amp;#62; 200 million dollars...&lt;p&gt;30%+ of its images are flickr images...&lt;p&gt;... 99%+ of which are &quot;All Rights Reserved&quot;.&lt;p&gt;How many&lt;p&gt;... page views,&lt;p&gt;... new subscribers,&lt;p&gt;... and $$$&lt;p&gt;have the most-pinned flickr images generated for pinterest, with the author not seeing a single cent... not even having the satisfaction of seeing their popularity on pinterest reflect in their flickr stats?&lt;p&gt;And: Pinterest does not even have the decency to display the author name and license info next to the image.&lt;p&gt;Pinterest&apos;s business model is flawed; it is based on systematic violation of copyright. At some point, someone will start a class-action lawsuit and invite flickr photographers whose works got &quot;pinned&quot; to sign up, to reclaim part of that &amp;#62;$200 million pie.&lt;p&gt;In fact, this seems like a valid startup idea to me: Create a one-page website explaining to flickr users what has been going on. Do a systematic reverse image search to find out which authors have been affected and invite them to join.
Arrange with an interested lawfirm to get a % of their fee in exchange for delivering the list of potential plaintiffs.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Terretta</author><text>&quot;This may make sense for images which are to be used in a commercial context, but for personal use like how I wanted to use the images, it&apos;s way too expensive and much too much friction.&quot;&lt;p&gt;That&apos;s why Flickr lets you search for Creative Commons images, for which the photographer gives you that personal use permission in advance.</text></comment>
<story><title>Pinterest, We Have a Problem</title><url>http://whatblag.com/2012/03/07/pinterest-we-have-a-problem/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>js2</author><text>Recently, I wanted to make some picture postcards of various locations around the US for personal use, so I went looking for images. I found many on Flickr. I wanted to compensate the original photographer. There is no easy way to do this.&lt;p&gt;At best, some photographs have a &quot;request to license&quot; link that bounces you to a third party (typically Getty Images) which offers to &quot;Review the photo to determine if it&apos;s a good fit for licensing through us; Contact the photographer; Handle the details like releases and pricing&quot; and takes &quot;between two and seven days to arrange licensing.&quot; with prices typically around $100 for usable resolution for a postcard.&lt;p&gt;At worst, you have to sign in to Yahoo so that you can send the photographer a message about wanting to use their photo. You may or may not get a reply, and you have to arrange how to pay the photographer, if at all.&lt;p&gt;This may make sense for images which are to be used in a commercial context, but for personal use like how I wanted to use the images, it&apos;s way too expensive and much too much friction.&lt;p&gt;The vast majority of images will never be used commercially. There should be an easier way to remunerate the photographer, and at more reasonable prices. A &quot;Pix Store&quot; if you will. Maybe that&apos;s what the stock photo sites are supposed to be, but they don&apos;t have nearly the inventory.&lt;p&gt;Sorry for the tangent.</text></item><item><author>OneBytePerGreen</author><text>Pinterest has a market valuation of &amp;#62; 200 million dollars...&lt;p&gt;30%+ of its images are flickr images...&lt;p&gt;... 99%+ of which are &quot;All Rights Reserved&quot;.&lt;p&gt;How many&lt;p&gt;... page views,&lt;p&gt;... new subscribers,&lt;p&gt;... and $$$&lt;p&gt;have the most-pinned flickr images generated for pinterest, with the author not seeing a single cent... not even having the satisfaction of seeing their popularity on pinterest reflect in their flickr stats?&lt;p&gt;And: Pinterest does not even have the decency to display the author name and license info next to the image.&lt;p&gt;Pinterest&apos;s business model is flawed; it is based on systematic violation of copyright. At some point, someone will start a class-action lawsuit and invite flickr photographers whose works got &quot;pinned&quot; to sign up, to reclaim part of that &amp;#62;$200 million pie.&lt;p&gt;In fact, this seems like a valid startup idea to me: Create a one-page website explaining to flickr users what has been going on. Do a systematic reverse image search to find out which authors have been affected and invite them to join.
Arrange with an interested lawfirm to get a % of their fee in exchange for delivering the list of potential plaintiffs.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>briandon</author><text>The Getty Images process doesn&apos;t sound too terrible to me.&lt;p&gt;Is the up-to-a-week wait partly a consequence of GI giving the photog a chance to approve/deny the request?  That would be reasonable -- they might not want, for example, a Neo-Nazi group licensing their photo of blonde, blue-eyed kids for some sort of racist poster campaign.&lt;p&gt;Also, $100 licensing for a photo that you really love is cheap as chips.&lt;p&gt;By personal use, do you mean that you were literally going to produce one copy of each postcard and keep them all yourself?  You weren&apos;t going to make multiple copies and give/send any to anyone else?</text></comment>