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How to Report Copyright Infringements to Pinterest

How to Report Copyright Infringements to Pinterest

Header Reporting Copyright Infringement to Pinterest

In these How-to blog posts, we’d like to help you and your brand out by giving you some the tools to report copyright infringements yourself. This week, we’re going to talk about how to report a copyright infringing image to Pinterest.

Summary

  • Pinterest and Copyright Infringements
  • How to Report Copyright Infringing Pinterest Content
  • Why worry about Pinterest infringements when we can do so for you

Pinterest and Copyright Infringements

What is Pinterest?

You’ve probably heard of the name Pinterest before. You might even manage a couple of boards yourself. Pinterest was founded in 2009 by Ben Silbermann, Evan Sharp and Paul Sciarra and after a couple of months of development and beta testing it went live in 2010. 

Nowadays, Pinterest has grown considerably and it has over 400 million monthly active users as of August 2020. ¹ On this social media giant, users can share ideas and inspiration by means of pinning images to boards and sharing them with other users.

Other users can then pin these images or save these boards themselves. Pinterest is mainly used by people who need inspiration on topics such as: interior design ideas for living rooms, discovering new clothing styles, make-up trends and many more topics. 

Copyright Infringement on Pinterest

Sadly, it’s not all about inspiration and the sharing of ideas. Like most social media channels, Pinterest is not without content that is copyright infringing. Pinterest has a copyright policy; however, it’s up to users to report illegally uploaded content.

Therefore, users can upload whatever they want since Pinterest will not actively look for infringements themselves. It’s not just images that users can upload, they can also add URLs to these images. You can already imagine how this can lead to digital piracy.

And piracy on Pinterest is not just something discovered recently. Jeff Turned, in 2012, was already writing about how copyright infringement was already apparent on the social media site, and their solution to piracy was anything but positive. ² 

Ever since then, Pinterest has had recurring problems when it comes to piracy. In 2014 it got sued for $8 million by photographer Christopher Boffoli for not removing illegally shared copies of his copyrighted photos from their platform. ³

To prove that piracy is still a problem on Pinterest, we did a quick check. We went to the social media site and simply looked for the keywords “Full Movie Bluray Rip”. We got thousands of results leading us to illegal cyberlockers and video sites.

How to report Copyright Infringing Pinterest Content

Luckily, it’s not the end of the world. You can take down copyright infringing content from the Pinterest site, and it won’t take you long either. All you have to do is fill in a simple copyright infringement form on their website, and Pinterest will do the rest.

But where can one find this copyright infringement form? Well, that’s why we’re here. Onsist has helped out hundreds of brands with Anti-Piracy Protection services (want to know more about this service? Check it out.), and Pinterest reporting is part of the routine. 

First of all, you need to navigate to this URL: https://www.pinterest.com/about/copyright/dmca-pin/

Step 1: Fill in Contact Information

The first step of filling in the copyright infringement form of Pinterest is to fill in your contact information. This information is in regards to the person filling in the form.

As you can see, this is all basic information. Fill in your full name, your company name (if you have one), your phone number and an email address. This will be the email Pinterest will use to contact you in case they need extra information.

You also need to provide pinterest with a physical address. If you don’t have an office, you can fill in your home address. If you do have an office on which your company is registered, then you should fill in that address. Finally, select the country you’re located in.

Step 2: Identify your Copyrighted Work

The second step in reporting a copyright infringing Pinterest image is to identify your own copyrighted work. Pinterest needs this information in order to verify that you’re the rightful owner of the content you’re about to report to them.

First off, you need to select what type of work your copyright content is. In the drop down menu, you’ll get to choose from options such as: an image, a video, text, recipe/instructions, name, object you own, etc. If your work is not in here, you can pick the “Other” item.

Secondly, you’ll have to provide Pinterest with a URL to your copyright content. This can be a page on your website, your social media page or any other place that can verify that you’re the official owner of the content in question. The more specific the URL, the better.

Finally, describe your copyrighted work to Pinterest. Do this as detailed and as specific as you can. The better the description, the easier it is for Pinterest to understand your content and verify that you own it. 

Do you have multiple copyrighted works? Then you can add another by clicking on the “Add Another” button and follow the steps above again.

Step 3: Identify the Infringing Content

The third step in taking down illegal Pinterest content is to identify the infringing content you want to report. This is where you’ll add the infringing Pinterest posts.

First of all, you need to have the URL to the infringing Pinterest content. You can add the first infringing URL to the first field. Make sure you add the full URL to a Pinterest pin. They even give an example of what the reported URLs need to look like. 

Secondly, you need to decide if you want to check the “Remove All” box. If checked, Pinterest will not only remove the image you’ve reported, it will also go through their database and will take down copies of that images as well. If you check this box, do make sure that you don’t have a legal copy of that image on Pinterest, because it will be removed.

Now you need to decide if you’d like to check the “Strike” box. If checked, Pinterest will give a copyright strike to the person that uploaded the copyright infringing image. Multiple strikes will result in a ban from Pinterest. Some brands don’t feel this is necessary and just want the image removed.

Step 4: Signing and submitting the form

You’ve made it to the final step of reporting copyright infringing Pinterest content. All you have to do now is sign the form and send it to Pinterest.

The first step in this last section of the copyright infringement form asks you to check three boxes. By checking these boxes, you confirm that the information is your notice is accurate, that you filled it in with good faith belief and that you state that you’re the owner under penalty of perjury.

Finally, you fill in your name again as a signature. All that’s left now is to press submit and your copyright infringement notice will be sent to Pinterest. Usually, it takes Pinterest 24 to 48 hours to reply to a notice. 

Why worry about Pinterest infringements when we can do so for you

Now that you know how to report copyright infringements to Pinterest, would you like to do this on a weekly or even daily basis? Why not let an experienced brand protection provider such as Onsist take care of this for you. 

We’ve helped over 700 brands protect their intellectual property by taking down illegally shared copies on social media and other sites. This includes Pinterest removals as well. Stop worrying and let us do the work, so you can reclaim your revenue.

Our Anti-Piracy Services are specifically aimed at brands and companies wanting to stop losing money to digital piracy, and start taking down copyright infringements. Have a look at our services, or contact us for more information on what we can do for your brand.

SOURCES

1. https://news.yahoo.com/more-400-million-users-around-world-connect-pinterest-153930499.html

2. https://www.jeffturner.info/pinterest-still-pirate/

3. https://torrentfreak.com/pinterest-sued-over-pirated-photos-imgur-off-the-hook-141203/

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