Photo sharing can be a great way of sharing content with your circle of friends that have the same interest as you do, but whether it is done innocently or deliberately, there is always the possibility of violating copyright rules.
Flickr which is a Yahoo photo sharing website is now the third most popular source of pictures for Pinterest and what many Flickr users have been complaining about is that their photos are being shared without their approval. With Pinterest worried about the potential copyright infringement lawsuits that can come out of these types of complaints, the start-up has created a snipped of code known as do-not-pin and Flickr has just implemented this across their site to try and protect the intellectual property of their user base.
According to a comment made by a Flickr representative, the site wide tag will be triggered under a couple of different circumstances such as when a user disables content sharing on their account. Additionally, it will also be added by default to any non-safe, non-public webpages. To put it another way, in order for Pinterest users to be able to pin content from Flickr, that content must be considered safe, public and the copyright owner must have sharing enabled. Flickr has certainly moved in the right direction to address the concerns of its users, but the website will be unable to protect its users from all acts of copyright violation. For instance, a Pinterest user that really wants a Flickr image can simply download the picture and post it manually.
