I remember when the Pinterest thing was announced. A lot of members were up in arms because they weren't "publishing" their photos for the general public to use. Posting anything on the internet is opening that door, though.

It's still weird to scroll through a thread with pics and see that "pin it" thing come up on the photos. We are used to another poster asking if they can save it instead of random people saving/using pics without our knowing! It's not a blog where the writer WANTS you to pin away.

True, but you don't need the button popping up to post a picture to Pinterest.

Years ago in Kitchens someone told a story about a friend being in Scotland and seeing the poster's picture of her dog on a greeting card!

There is NO protection for photos you post from anyone using them for any purpose. That one is egregious, however, because you probably have some rights if they use it for commercial purposes. The Scottish company probably figured no one who knew the American picture would see it.

Watermarking might stop some Pinners, but watermarks are just as easy to remove as to place. Even without a dewatermarking program, I can manually remove one in 15-30 minutes. Metadata can be changed just as easily.

Since Google changed the weights in their search functions about 6-7 years ago, Gardenweb has been on the top of many search topics, so there's a lot more traffic here than the number of active participants would seem to indicate.

I've said before and I'll say again, posting to a forum, message board, discussion site, blog, or bulletin board is like writing on the wall in the public restroom at the beach. Everyone might see it, and possibly deface it, and no one will erase it. You post it, it's there. And even when the place you posted it goes poof, it's quite possibly recoverable using the Wayback Machine.

Your best bet against having your pictures pinned and repinned, if you want to post them, is make them ugly. :) If the subject matter is unique, that's no help, but if there's a prettier picture of the same kind of thing, most people will give you a go-by.