Pin It Wednesday #7

It seems that Pinterest has a flaw.  Yes, I've said it.  There's a flaw.  Although I really like the site, I've often wondered where the photos come from.  Of course, there's no one answer: 

some are uploaded by users -- For example, these two quilts, which I uploaded from my computer to share with followers are on one of my boards and gives me credit.

some come from other websites -- For example, these quilts come from a variety of sources, some of which I know, but many are not credited at all.

This cute quilt photo came from flickr.com,
but I have no idea who posted it there.

This darling little quilt photo says, "uploaded by user."
Now who that is?  We'll likely never know.

This one by Bill Kerr and Weeks Ringle gives them credit in the comments.
However, it's easy enough to remove the comment when re-pinning the photograph.  Ouch!

And some are blatantly taken from sites that clearly do not want to share because they are trying to sell something.

From patternspot.com via pinterest.com

So what's the problem, you might ask.  Well, it's quite simple if you visit patternspot.com's copyright page.  

All content and material available via PatternSpot.com is protected by International Copyright Law. The copyrights on individual works are retained by the designer and/or publisher, as noted.

Every file delivered through PatternSpot.com is watermarked with information sufficient to identify the site user. 

No copyrighted material or design may be distributed or reproduced by any means—graphic, electronic, or mechanical—without prior written permission of the designer or copyright holder. This includes, but is not limited to: photocopying, emailing, file-sharing, recording, taping, posting to a third-party site, information storage and retrieval systems, etc.

They don't want anyone to take or use the photographs on their site.  Sure, it's free advertising, so that might help to sell the patterns, but there's no way to know that the photo came from their website.  The pinterest.com copy doesn't give credit to patternspot.com unless the person who steals (yes, that's the word) makes the effort to give them credit.

Does anyone else see a problem here?  Please weigh in with a comment.  I don't want to start an argument, but I would like to know how others feel about this issue.  Plagiarism, copyrights and information theft are becoming a major problem as a result of the freedom of the internet.  I'm curious about what other people think.