>I most certainly could not think of any way that I either owned those photos or had a license, consent or release from the photographer who owned them //
Strikes me that as long as you personally only "repin" content that Pinterest have already provided to you then your personal liability shouldn't come in to play.
Pinterest are providing a user-tagged image search service quite like Google's image search (in legal context at least) IMO. Where it differs really is that the user-tagging is explicit (though I assume that Google still have that tagging "game" in place) and that the images that Pinterest host are larger [full-sized?]. I see re-pinning as akin to providing a link to a Google Image search page; the service provider in both cases has initially made the image copy and the user has simply referenced that and added meta-data.
Now I do think things are a bit more fuzzy in the situation where the user causes the Pinterest service provider to acquire the image. But again it is the service provider that is retaining the copy of the creators work. Moreover if you just choose to "pin it" when you add rather than upload then you don't even locally store the images.
Where things get really interesting to me is if you use Pinterest (which I assume is a USA based service) to get content from another country. Pinterest should find that they're subject to the local laws but the user should only be subject (to my mind) to USA law and their own local laws. This could cause some major problems for Pinterest IMO.
In short, to my view it looks like the liability for any tortuous action WRT copyright lies with Pinterest and not the user excepting if the user uploads directly.
Strikes me that as long as you personally only "repin" content that Pinterest have already provided to you then your personal liability shouldn't come in to play.
Pinterest are providing a user-tagged image search service quite like Google's image search (in legal context at least) IMO. Where it differs really is that the user-tagging is explicit (though I assume that Google still have that tagging "game" in place) and that the images that Pinterest host are larger [full-sized?]. I see re-pinning as akin to providing a link to a Google Image search page; the service provider in both cases has initially made the image copy and the user has simply referenced that and added meta-data.
Now I do think things are a bit more fuzzy in the situation where the user causes the Pinterest service provider to acquire the image. But again it is the service provider that is retaining the copy of the creators work. Moreover if you just choose to "pin it" when you add rather than upload then you don't even locally store the images.
Where things get really interesting to me is if you use Pinterest (which I assume is a USA based service) to get content from another country. Pinterest should find that they're subject to the local laws but the user should only be subject (to my mind) to USA law and their own local laws. This could cause some major problems for Pinterest IMO.
In short, to my view it looks like the liability for any tortuous action WRT copyright lies with Pinterest and not the user excepting if the user uploads directly.
This is of course not legal advice.