Easy does it, pal. Before you throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater you do realize that the bane of all social networks is the same thing that makes the compelling and interesting too, right? Sharing. Instead of preventing Pinterest users from helping you gain additional visibility by pinning your images on the Pinterest site, perhaps you should instead consider adding a small copyright notice on the images themselves?
You're not alone, however, and one of the greatest challenges that an image-based site like Pinterest has is respecting the copyright of images that users -- usually with the best of intentions -- republish to the site. I've done it myself, posting things like book covers or movie publicity posters so I can share favorites with my friends.
Whether or not you're okay with Facebook, Google Plus and Twitter folk reposting your photos, it does turn out that Pinterest has heard the complaints and now has a simple way for you to stop people pinning your content.
Just add the following line to the "head" section of any page you don't want pinned:
Do so and when someone clicks on the "Pin It" button, here's what they'll see:
A simple and straightforward solution, and if you have a blog or site based on an entry template, you can add the line of code to the template and every page will automatically be unpinnable.
Oh, and Pinterest says "Pinterest respects the intellectual property rights of others and expects its users to do the same."
About the Author: Dave Taylor has been involved with the Internet since 1980 and is internationally known as an expert on both business and technology issues. Holder of an MSEd and MBA, author of twenty books and founder of four startups, he also runs a strategic marketing company and consults with firms seeking the best approach to working with weblogs and social networks. Dave is an award-winning speaker and frequent guest on radio and podcast programs. AskDaveTaylor.com http://www.intuitive.com/blog/