The extremely popular image sharing website Pinterest has decided an update of their terms of service is necessary to clear up some issues that have surfaced over the last couple of months.
In an email to users overnight they indicate the following significant changes to those terms:
- Our original Terms stated that by posting content to Pinterest you grant Pinterest the right for to sell your content. Selling content was never our intention and we removed this from our updated Terms.
- We updated our Acceptable Use Policy and we will not allow pins that explicitly encourage self-harm or self-abuse.
- We released simpler tools for anyone to report alleged copyright or trademark infringements.
- Finally, we added language that will pave the way for new features such as a Pinterest API and Private Pinboards.
It is nice to see them being good citizens of the Internet and taking proactive stands on the type of content they will allow on the site.
These new terms also address a couple of areas that they have recently been criticized for, copyright infringement and selling your pinned content, and making it clear on how they want to handle those things.
While we are on the subject of Pinterest I do have some invitations available for anyone who is not on the site yet. Just send me your email address through our comment form and I will send out as many as I can or am allowed to share.