Do You Have Permission to Pin?

Pin It

Note: Since I wrote the original blog post a month ago, Pinterest has changed their Terms of Service. I have chosen to leave much of my original blog post below intact because it appears that the new terms still say that we own the rights to whatever we are pinning, but some of the information below is no longer relevant. 

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Do you have permission to pin? Or maybe the more important question is, "Did you know that you need permission to pin?" If you're on Pinterest, you need to read this blog post!

Recently, I read a disturbing article, Pinterest Users Need to Read the Fine Print, and I learned that when we signed up for Pinterest, we actually agreed to the following terms:

• We own the rights to images we are pinning. 
• We grant full rights to Pinterest to use those images in any fashion! 

Seems like a site that's set up for sharing and collaborating would make these terms more obvious when someone signs up. Am I going to take down all my Pinterest boards? No way! But because I'm now aware of these terms, I have changed how I'm going to use Pinterest. I'm no longer going to pin images directly from someone's site or blog unless I have permission. If you have a blog, be sure to read the whole article to find out how you can give me and others permission to pin. ,

Permission to Pin Granted!
Yes, you have my permission to pin! You may pin any image from Corkboard Connections, from Teaching Resources, or from my TeachersPayTeachers.com store. Please follow my Pinterest boards and repin anything you like to your own boards!

Unless you are a blogger or site owner, that's all you need to know! Just pin away to your heart's content! But if you are a blogger, keep reading ....

 

Information for Bloggers and Educational Site Owners Only

As I said earlier, I'm no longer going to pin from anyone else's site without permission. So I invite you to post a message somewhere on your blog that clearly specifies what you will permit when it comes to pinning. Make sure that visitors can find your permissions easily so they don't have to contact you to ask. Feel free to place the badge above on your blog to show people that they have permission to pin, and you may link it back to this blog post if you would like. Here's the code you can use to add it to the HTML code in your sidebar:
<center><a href="http://corkboardconnections.blogspot.com/2012/02/do-you-have-permission-to-pin.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.lauracandler.com/images/pinRed.jpg" border="0" /></a></center>

By the way, the Link Up below is closed, but these sites have all given permission to pin, so visit them and pin away to your heart's content!

P.S. A few thanks are in order ... Last year I signed up for a course called Teaching Blog Traffic School that consists of 30 social marketing videos for teachers, and we have a super online support group. Thanks to Angela Watson of The Cornerstone for Teachers for sharing the Technorati article with the group. Thanks to Charity Preston of the Organized Classroom Blog who created the course! Finally, thanks to Denise Boehm of Sunny Days in Second Grade for her help with designing the Permission to Pin badge above. If you're interested in learning about the course, you can read about it on my Teacherpreneur page.