ProFantasy - Pinterest Page
CharlesWayneRobinson
Traveler
I created a Pinterest page for my ProFantasy stuff similar to my Deviant Art Profile.
If anyone wants, they can check it out here: https://www.pinterest.com/crobinson1797/
PS: I was not sure which discussion category to stick this in - I hope that Cartographic Resources is okay.
If anyone wants, they can check it out here: https://www.pinterest.com/crobinson1797/
PS: I was not sure which discussion category to stick this in - I hope that Cartographic Resources is okay.
Comments
I must be getting old. It used to be that people were polite and respectful to the author of a work.
A lot of users doesn't understand that pinning something is actually a way for Pinterest to earn money from other people's work. They (the user) will often see it as an innocent thing that even increases someones exposure. Other users may understand the fact, but they simply doesn't care.
I have to congratulate Pinterest in this. They have found a truly morally dubious way of driving traffic to their site (Which is what earns them money [ads, user data/statistics to sell, etc]), while being able to claim they are innocent (because it is the user who did the pinning of the copyrighted material). They even hide stuff behind a login wall, so if you don't want to accept their terms of use, it is really difficult finding your stuff on the site in order to send them a proper DMCA. Of course, not to forget that the DMCA is just an American thing, but many US companies tends to hide behind it for all global misdeeds nevertheless.
Of course, there are also responsible people on Pinterest, as well as people who only pin their own stuff, but there a sufficient large amount of people out there not in those categories.
Of course, it gets to the point where you could waste a whole lifetime filling in forms to get things removed at that kind of rate, so they win either way, because I'm not likely to go through all that hassle just to remove the maps when they are already on public display here and at the Guild.
Curiously, the only maps that haven't been pinned are Ethran, and the very final version of Merelan City. I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that this is because they were both scooped up and plonked on the Guild FB page as soon as they hit the Finished Maps forum. So - irony of ironies - one social media trumps another, but at least my maps are on the Guild FB page with my full permission and consent, and I am properly credited as the author and owner
This is the map they said they made.
By the way Charles, have you made any money from those things you are selling on that website yet? I went over and took a look, very clever idea
I think that if the Guild had a Pinterest page both Ethran and the final version of Merelan City would have been pinned, since they were instantly applauded and put on the FB page, but neither of those two maps have been pinned.
The thing I don't like about Pinterest, apart from the fact they are making money out of my maps via the advertising income described by Remy above, is that unlike FaceBook a pinner can change the comment and take credit for the artwork themselves - just as Tonnichiwa has discovered.
There will be a few red faces though once I publish, because the liars who do this kind of thing to my maps will be blown clean out of the water by the proof of my ownership on the author's webpage :P :P :P
I also think I do plenty of advertising for Profantasy just by showing my maps at the Guild and allowing them to go up on the Guild webpage, where people who want to be able to draw maps rather than just look at them, are want to come
They pulled it directly from the Cartographer's Guild website. I am not saying that the the Cartographer's Guild is to blame though.
Its not that I'm against sharing. I'm just against people making money out of me like that without my permission.
I'm not even being credited as the author.
This is the thread, if you are interested
http://makingamark.blogspot.com/2012/03/takedown-how-pinterest-moved-fast-to.html
She claims to have gotten all of his stuff removed from Pinterest in an hour, with a properly constructed email. Not sure how well anyone else can do it, that doesn't have a popular blog, but the legalities are universal. You might also research a proper, legally binding DMCA notice (their infringement reporting form isn't).
(Note that there is a link in there that you can substitute your own domain into, and see everything that comes from that domain. This makes it pretty easy to identify infringing images.)
As a side note, Pinterest is apparently hosted on Amazon's cloud service, so infringements can be reported directly to Amazon as well (though they prefer you go through Pinterest first):
http://www.webpronews.com/pinterest-dmca-notices-amazon-2012-03/
I'll have a look at that.
For now I'm concentrating my efforts on preventing any more of them going anywhere without my name on them.
The maps which are being abused this way are all the ones that I did without my copyright note and name on the bottom (unless anyone has seen otherwise). I think it puts people off quite a lot.
I'm also going to mentally assign some of my maps as 'lost' beyond hope, and simply deal with anyone who ever tries to challenge me over ownership if it should ever come to that once I've published. I do, after all, have all the WIPs at various resolutions and the original CC3 files
Now that I've calmed down I can see that it is unlikely such a law suit would work because I have all the evidence of having worked on it for years, the only thing I really need to do is always, always add the copyright info on every single map I do in the future, and for really special maps use a watermark.
Those who would are, generally, deterred by the fact that no qualified attorney will touch a case like that on a contingency (and attorney's can get in a lot of trouble for filing bogus lawsuits - it's called barratry, and it's a crime in many places, and potentially grounds for disbarment everywhere), and retainers will be five figures or more. So the sort of people who would sue you don't have the money to do so.
(It does happen, though, occasionally. Often with hiliarious results, like The Oatmeal vs FunnyJunk.)
Along with 194.187.170.128
Hopefully they are just using them as game maps. The look at my site late at night my time, but that would be day time in their time zone.
Look like it's probably an ISP selling broadband service, but with a static IP, it seems less likely to be residential.
There are reports of that particular IP being the source of hacks to set up fraudulent web sites, including ones that take credit card numbers. How confident are you in your server's security?
(My Covert Ops site gets more hits from Russia than everywhere else combined, but it seems to be genuine gaming interest, and it's hosted on Google Sites, so it's not my problem anyway.)
I don't sell anything, so hopefully they aren't scamming people out of money.