Artists No-Pin Policy for Etsy and Other Sites

Fine Artists Seeing Red? you Betcha!

Visual artists and artisans of fine jewelry and hand crafts are seeing red and making noise all over the web about their work being pinned on Pinterest without permission. Pinning intellectual property without permission is theft.

In yesterday's post, Pins Steal Your Art, I linked to two sites to explain how to avoid pins or to take back your work if it's already been pinned to Pinterest boards. You can embed an HTML code that prevents this process, if the website host permits it. Etsy doesn't permit it. Fine Art America allows pin-it button deletion. My domain site built on WordPress will have no-pin code from day one.

I contacted Etsy legal about my art shop having Pinterest pin-it buttons placed on every item I have listed when my permission to embed these buttons wasn't asked. They responded very quickly giving me links to the notice and policy. Etsy replied, in the most gracious non-legalese way, basically, I can have buttons or close up shop.  I still have the shop.

After I successfully pulled up a painting, copied it, printed it in full size, full resolution, off a 600x600 photo with watermark, I dropped larger items from the Etsy shop and placed in the title of every remaining item "No Pin Policy" to discourage the practice. I haven't found Etsy to be a great venue for my art because I don't work their system. I don't believe anyone is downloading and selling my prints, but the fact that they can isn't a good situation.

So, now I've setup a Pinterest account, Gail Kent Studio on Pinterest, and I'm trying to use it without infringing on any copyright to provide the article and informative links that I typically do in my blog posts. Not so easy to do. No original art works will be pinned and none of the art articles I've linked to allow pinning-none. When you look at the dozens of share options provided on art articles, Pinterest isn't one. You have to ask yourself why. Pinterest was described in some of their online description as a catalog. That's exactly what it is. Artists need catalogs, just not free art ones. I'll still give it the ole college try and follow-up in a later post. It may be a very boring site.

Beautiful Bird on Picnic Island Beach Strewn with Algae Bloom

Art for sale and art not for sale

The photos I post on my blog are usually nature shots from the beach where I paint and are watermarked so folks know the source. I would be happy to share most with a request for personal use. They are seldom of high resolution or cropped and edited as fine art. I upload some photos to Fine Art America for affordable small prints and cards of local interest, Tampa Bay Sunset.


My art photos on the other hand are my art and I will do all I can to protect my art. Notice has been given in the watermark and, on Etsy, in the Titles.



Comments are always encouraged.
If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too.

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:

Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com  my Fine Art America gallery
Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent
www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
Gail Kent Studio Notes  my Tumblr blog site
Gail Kent Studio on Pinterest
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios 

www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio


Google+ Profile link
Gail Kent

Fine Art America Gallery Page Link for Tampa Bay art prints:
tampa prints