[tissarah]

It seems to me the biggest issue with these sites activity is when they replace a user's desire/need to visit the content creator's site. It's no longer collecting URLs or sharing favorite things -- it's recompiling copyrighted work into a new work and leaving out the original content creators. It seems that's the infringement (at least in my gut).

What if, instead, Pinterest were to behave more like google images and provide only thumbnails. Where to see that "12 uses for baking soda" you had to click through to the blogger's site? Could that preserve the service and the community, but protect content creators as well?

There is certainly an experience trade off here. Discussion is less likely to occur on Pinterest, the user may have no further reason to go to that blog -- they only wanted to see the list. These sites might not be able to handle the traffic...and on and on.

But it would seem you'd be closer to sharing your favorite things while not taking advantage of copyrighted material (possibly even being more legal about it), and often providing a marginally better experience. As a user I've now discovered this blog not just the uses for baking soda. For pins where the image wasn't enough, I didn't have to deal with the second click.

Trade offs trade offs trade offs...