in violation of Pinterest's own terms of service , which state that when a user pins an image it means they have been granted access to do so or own the item personally Pinning Violates Image Licenses Online bloggers, writers, artists and photographers have a simple, legal way of benefitting from their images posted on the web: licensing. An image license means the copyright owner gives permission for a specific, limited use, in exchange for something in return. With stock photos, the "something" is money: people pay to use good-quality photos to make their websites or publications look great. With Creative Commons licensing, the "something" is credit and a link back.A backlink is a valuable commodity: it not only sends traffic to the artist or photographer's website; it also can help a site rank better in search engines. With affiliate marketing programs like Allposters.com or Zazzle.com, the affiliate may use small copyrighted images like movie posters or artwork in exchange for a link back to the store selling the poster or art. Pinning a licensed photo cuts through these legal, mutually beneficial agreements like a machete through a spiderweb. Benn Silbermann is the founder of Pinterest.  On Monday he wrote a post on the Pinterest blog "Oh, How Pinteresting!" about Growing Up which states their position on copyright - and how they respect it, help people to report it - and (this is NEW!) insert code into their websites to prevent images from being copied. We decided to start today