Interest

You probably never thought of yourself as a lawbreaker, right? Most likely you would not go into a music store and steal a CD or DVD, or go into a bookstore and steal a book. But, would you download something that you had not purchased? Would you copy a picture from someone else's Web site and claim it for your own? Would you download an article and try to customize it so that it did not appear to be plagiarized? These issues have become increasingly important as we move further into the 21st century. Social networks are making it very easy to share and reshare information.

This reality leads to a fundamental question: Who owns the information that gets posted on the Internet? Consider one social network, Pinterest. Pinterest is a small business with only about 20 employees. It is primarily a technology company that provides infrastructure and software that enable users to "pin" things they like. Realizing that many users would likely try to "pin" pictures or ideas that were not their own, Pinterest pre-empted the problem by incorporating into their user agreement a clause specifying that users could pin only pictures or ideas that they created themselves.

Sounds simple enough, right? Wrong. Many Pinterest users do not adhere to the terms of the user agreement. Rather, they pin ideas that are not theirs. What happens in these cases? The simple answer is that the company will revoke access if it catches users downloading copyrighted third-party material. The issue is more complicated than this, however. Pinterest is a small business, and it does not have the personnel to police every pin that its users make. Given this reality, who is at fault here? Is Pinterest at fault because it does not adequately police its users? Or, does the fault lie with the users who agree not to steal intellectual property but do so anyway? Pinterest is just one example of a site that suffers from this dilemma. All social media sites have similar agreements, and they also experience a host of intellectual property issues.

Is the main issue here that people do not care about user agreements? Do you think there will eventually be a legal "crackdown" in social media over ethical issues as there was with Napster in 2002? In its fi rst incarnation, Napster was the name of an online, peer-to-peer, filesharing music service. Napster ran into legal difficulties over copyright infringement, ceased operations, and was acquired by Roxio. In its second incarnation, Napster became an online music store until it was acquired by Rhapsody from Best Buy in December, 2011. Sources: Compiled from A. Kosner, "Pinterest: Napster for Housewives or Wake Up Call for a Better Copyright Idea," Forbes, March 15, 2012; T. Poletti, "Is Pinterest the Next Napster?" The Wall Street Journal, March 14, 2012; A. Prakash, "Exploring the Ethics of Pinterest," www.ohmyhandmade.com, accessed March 9, 2012; M. McHugh, "Pinterest Is Blowing Up-With Cries of Copyright Infringement," Digital Trends, February 17, 2012; www.pinterest .com, accessed March 5, 2013.

Questions

1. Who is at fault for the third-party copyright infringements enabled by Pinterest? Pinterest, its users, or both? (We discuss copyright infringement in detail in Chapter 4.)

2. Compare the ethics of "pinning" on Pinterest with downloading music fi les on Napster. Do you think that Pinterest will face the same fate as Napster? Why or why not?