Earlier this year, Pinterest started seeing the need for better rights management of the work that was being shared on their site. Flickr (and a number of other sites) had responded to public outcry by disallowing the sharing of Flickr images based on the licensing the photographer had set on upload (copyright vs different flavors of Creative Commons licenses).

I agreed with Flickr's actions. If my images on flickr are set to not allow sharing, Flickr implementing solutions to prevent people from sharing these easily is a good thing. Attribution or not, if you've set your images to not allow sharing, sharing it expressly goes against the creators wishes. Compare google (or any third party) using tracking cookies when your settings say otherwise & expressly told your browser not to allow it.

Jamie Keen writes over at The Verge,

While Pinterest users will be pleased to hear that they're now able to send Flickr photos direct to their pinboards, Flickr product manager Markus Spiering told us that it's also motivated by a desire to improve rights protection for photographers.

Any images that are sent to Pinterest from Flickr will keep the attribution for the photographer no matter how many times it gets repinned and will also add the photographer's details to any images hosted on Flickr that have simply been added using the URL. This also works if your photos are Pinned from other sites.

Share via Pinterest will be added to the sharing menu above each photo, and if you use it often enough it'll become one of your quick sharing options. If you don't want your images shared you're also able to opt out of the service, which will prevent your images from appearing on Pinterest altogether. However, Flickr sees the attribution as being a great way for users to discover other work by their favorite photographers.

I have since opened my flickr account up to allow sharing and there is now an official waking ideas pinterest account. If you're already following this blog, the portfolio site, and my flickr, you'll see mostly duplication, but I realize many people like to share and share and share on Pinterest and this opens up the potential audience. If you've not been following my photography for 10+ years, rather than going through it on flickr, I'll be catering to you and linking up a wide selection of images on Pinterest over the next week or so.