Pinterest Gives Copyright Credit to Etsy, Kickstarter, SoundCloud

After Pinterest‘s trove of copyrighted content became the subject of a legal debate, the popular social site made efforts to automatically add citations to content from specific sources. On Wednesday, it announced that it had expanded this practice to five new sites.

Since May, the feature had added citations to any content Pinned from Flickr, YouTube, Behance or Vimeo. Now content Pinned from photography community 500px, Etsy, Kickstarter, Slideshare and SoundCloud will enjoy the same automatic citations — which can’t be edited.

Although Pinterest’s Terms of Use prohibit its members from posting copyrighted material without permission, it doesn’t take more than a quick look at the site to notice that most of its content violates these terms.

Some have suggested that the large amount of copyrighted, unattributed content that has been copied to Pinterest’s servers creates a legal problem for the site.

Pinterest may be shielded from responsibility for what its users upload, but knowingly facilitating copyright infringement, according to the Wall Street Journal, could result in a Napster-like lawsuit.

“It sure sounds like copying people’s photographs without authorization would be copyright infringement,” wrote photographer Sean Locke in February. “Yet, Pinterest seems to be encouraging people to scour the web, pinning (copying to their servers) artwork created by others.”

The same month, Pinterest offered content creators an opt-out option that prevents their content from being Pinned. It also added a 500-character limit to descriptions in order to prevent users from posting entire articles and blog posts.

Pinterest’s attribution option is a more cooperative approach to protecting content creators, and sites such as Flickr — among the first to install the opt-out code — have embraced it.

But attribution isn’t instant permission to use copyrighted content. Would you like to see Pinterest go further in its efforts to protect content creators? Or are you happy with the solutions they’ve created?

Facebook Acquires Face.com

Facebook has acquired Face.com for an undisclosed amount, the Israeli startup announced Monday. The terms of the deal have not yet been disclosed.

Face.com powers facial recognition software that third-party developers can incorporate freely into their own apps. It also has two Facebook apps of its own: Photo Finder, which helps people find untagged pictures of themselves as well as their friends, and Photo Tagger, which helps people quickly assign tags to group photos.

In a post on Face.com’s corporate blog, CEO Gil Hirsch indicated that he and his team would be focused on building out Facebook’s mobile products.

“Like our friends at Facebook, we think that mobile is a critical part of people’s lives as they both create and consume content, and share content with their social graph. By working with Facebook directly, and joining their team, we’ll have more opportunities to build amazing products that will be employed by consumers -– that’s all we’ve ever wanted to do,” Hirsch wrote.

Hirsch did not say whether Face.com would soon redirect to Facebook.com. Facebook could not be reached for further information by press time.

Multiple reports that Facebook was in talks to acquire Face.com for “tens of millions” of dollars emerged last month. A Facebook spokesperson told Mashable at the time that the company does not comment on rumors.

This is the first major acquisition Facebook has made since going public in May. There’s still no word whether Facebook is also still planning to acquire browser maker Opera.

UPDATE: Facebook sent us its own comment on the acquisition: “People who use Facebook enjoy sharing photos and memories with their friends, and Face.com’s technology has helped to provide the best photo experience. This transaction simply brings a world-class team and a long-time technology vendor in house.” The company refused to declare the amount of the deal.

Share Your Wi-Fi, Get Rewarded

"Giving is receiving" is an old adage that doesn’t work for everyone — at least, not when it comes to Wi-Fi. Few of us are happy to discover unauthorized others have been leeching bandwidth off our hotspots’ signals.

But a new kind of WiFi hotspot launching later this year wants to change that.

It’s called Karma. And, like the regular kind of karma, it works by returning to you what you share with others. In this case, Wi-Fi.

Anyone in the vicinity can log on to your Karma Wi-Fi hotspot for a pay-as-you-go fee of $14 per GB of data. In return for each person who purchases connectivity through your device, you earn 100 Megabytes of free data — about enough to browse the Internet for five hours, and open 10,000 emails.

“It is not tied to a device, or to a network, but to you,” co-founder Steven van Wel explains.

In other words, you can use data purchased or earned over one Karma Wi-Fi hotspot to log onto another. There are no contracts, overage fees or subscriptions.

The startup expects to begin shipping hotspots by the end of 2012. The hotspots will sell for $69 and can support up to eight devices.

Karma isn’t a broadband provider itself, but it does partner with providers. And it adds a a subtle social layer to sharing Wi-Fi.

Users login to their accounts via Facebook so that hotspot owners can see who is using their device, and they can send a thank you note to a device owner after using it.

If it catches on, Karma could make connecting to the Internet anywhere easier. How many times have you turned on a connected device in a hotel room or restaurant and found a list of private, locked networks — but no open Wi-Fi access?

Ultimately, whether or not Karma is a good deal depends on your device and data habits. AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile all offer 5GB of data per month starting at $50. So if you use more than that — if you watch a lot of Netflix on your iPad, say — Karma could help you avoid expensive overages. Especially if you’re sharing your signal a lot and earning free bandwidth.

Will you be giving Karma Wi-Fi a try? Let us know why or why not in the comments.

6.5 Million LinkedIn Passwords Leaked - Dont Let it Happen To You

Do you have a LinkedIn account? If you answered yes, I sure hope you have changed your password.

You have probably heard that roughly 6.5 million LinkedIn account passwords were leaked the other day. Recent news has also revealed that some eHarmony and Last.fm passwords were leaked as well. The complete details regarding what information was compromised have not been released, but it is known that some accounts were hacked to in order to find sensitive information, send spam messages, etc. Regardless of what information these hackers have found, it is clear that a serious issue in online security has been exposed.

LinkedIn currently has more than 150 million users, which means the chances of your password being leaked are small (roughly 4%). Even though 4% is a small amount, the passwords we use online protect very important information, and anytime that safety is threatened, it is important the we take action. Even if you haven’t noticed any suspicious activity on your account, it is better to be safe and change your password just in case (especially if your password isn't a very secure one).

What To Do? First, it is important to use secure random passwords. A secure random password should combine capitalized and uncapitalized letters that do not spell out any words and should also include a combination of numbers and characters. Secondly, it is important that you use a different password for every site you use.

GREAT! How do I think of these random passwords and how do I remember them? A variety of sites offer password protection services where you can store passwords or content. One that combines features is MySocialCloud.com which offers safe storage of your username and password as well as a Random Password Generator that creates very secure passwords.

With the recent LinkedIn password leak, I knew I needed to change my LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter password because I had been using the same password for all three sites. Now that I use MySocialCloud, I was able to log-in and create secure random passwords for each site with the click of a button.

Since MySocialCloud can store these passwords and allow me to auto-login to the sites in the future, I don’t have to worry about having to remember the complex passwords. Now, if/when a password leak happens in the future for whatever site it may be, I don’t have to worry about my information being exposed.

We hope that you enjoy your safer and more secure online life!