Ever since Pinterest popped up and people were able to virtually cut out a recipe for white chocolate and raspberry cake and stick it to their online kitchen cork board or paste a photo of their ideal living room into an electronic scrapbook, there has been a slow and steady grumble about the copyright implications of doing this. If it isn't your photo, you don't necessarily have the right to pin it to your Pinterest board. Pinterest was quite clear that it was their users' responsibility to seek permission from copyright holders that would allow pinning and sharing; but were Pinterests' users all clear? On Friday, Pinterest announced that it was doing a deal with Getty Images to ensure that any Getty image appearing on the site will have its metadata appear alongside it: description, photographer, and date taken. Pinterest is paying for this, but it hasn't said how much.
Ostensibly, this is about Pinterest helping users to increase the value of their pins: the more information they hold, the better they are. More realistically, this is about Pinterest helping to assauge Getty's copyright concerns. Either way, proper attribution for photographers is a better state of affairs than orphaned pins.
Headsup to Mashable