DeeCee - 8:51 am on Mar 1, 2012 (gmt 0)

tangor, as is probably obvious by now, I agree with you. :)

Their attempt to make their users responsible will fail, because in 99% or more of their content, those users have absolutely no rights to the images they post. Lifted from web-sites, those users are mere third-party with no rights, and Pinterest both provide the theft tools and have the financial incentive to let their user do it. That business model will fail.

Its also fun to notice in that regard, that the TOS you show above says that the user (who typically owns nothing) is expected to

grant to Cold Brew Labs a worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, royalty-free license, with the right to sublicense, to use, copy, adapt, modify, distribute, license, sell, transfer, publicly display, publicly perform, transmit, stream, broadcast, access, view, and otherwise exploit such Member Content only on, through or by means of the Site, Application or Services.

So, even if you do own the images you make the Pinterest bots steal, by posting your images you have given Cold Brew Labs the right to sell, use, modify and make as much money as they can from your images.

I simply do not understand why anyone that legally owns images would want to give that level of rights away to a content scraper site.

If, as is obviously the case for most of their users, the poster owns nothing, then they cannot legally given away rights to something they do not own.

In either case, Pinterest show a business model based entirely on content theft. Any valid (legal) image they can get stashed in their databases, they by the TOS will take ownership for.

It is the most unsound business model I have ever heard of since Napster. Pretty much guaranteed to be taken down as "organized theft".