Of course with something new and cool there has to be an argument and I guess when copyrights and image use come to play Pinterest is the current playground of choice.

The big news is the fine print that many seem to have not read or ignored, but really... Is there more to it than just words?

Take a mo' to read through the Business Insider article "Pinterest Might Be Enabling Massive Copyright Theft"

There's a mention of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act

Thoughts:

Would a large corporation consider suing an individual only to receive negative press from beating up the little guy?

Would one individual sue another individual to gain nothing from what would cost them a lot in legal fees? How much blood do you hope to get from that one stone?

I'm sure there is a lot of grey areas here and it's certainly difficult to govern considering it's the worldwide web and not the USA web. (See above DMCA link)

Would this mean sites such as [insert many known fashion blogs here] would be at risk of a lawsuit for images that they don't have permission to use? Or what about blogs that don't attribute the rightful owner of the image? What about the successful bloggers that aren't just having a creative outlet but actually getting advertisers on their blogs, making moolah and using images without permission? What about hair & makeup artists, like myself who have a blog to use as self-promotion and another creative outlet? [I've been told in the past by a certain publication that MY OWN EDITORIAL WORK with them cannot go on my digital portfolios since I don't own the right, YET sites such as Pinterest or fashion blogs that repost editorials can and have posted my work... ps I pushed back with that publication and yes, of course I can use my own work. Duh. AC for the WIN!]

I think that who needs to weigh-in are the people who actually own the copyrights, since hair & makeup artists don't seem to own the rights to our artwork I obviously have no say.

[hair & makeup by me, Andrea Claire]

Do note the crusty tone in my voice: some works of art we should have the ability to share the rights to; and this is not a dig at the photographer: Jingna Zhang, who has credited me on her blog for this award winning image - it's just this particular image has circled the world with kudos to her but no one has tumbled my credit with the image or Margaret White (model) for that matter.

[Hair & makeup by Marc Teng]

So - I guess you can say I personally have mixed thoughts about the whole tumbling world of Pinterest, blogs etc... the original copyright owner may not control how things get credited. This above image was shot by Jingna for Bazaar Singapore and I came across it on Pinterest where the image was getting loads of kudos but there was no credit for the team. I added the credits in the comments but it is up to the people who 'repin' the image to leave the credits; hopefully they did.

PS: Although the above images are fabulous what stands out for you more - the hair or the photography? I've said it before: "it takes a fashion village to make beautiful pictures" it's a package deal... I guess so should be the copyright.