[Waterluvian]

Whatever you think the Internet was built for doesn’t matter. Copyright exists and some people want to retain their rights to share an image without people just wholesale scraping it without even visiting the website.

This antisocial behaviour of walking in and taking whatever isn’t bolted down leads to an unfortunate arms race of watermarks, other technologies, and crappy laws that attempt to stop consumers from disrespecting the rights of producers.

Whether intended or not, Google at least makes you visit the website before taking the images. (Which is contrary to all the times google does this for its own benefit.)

The number of people who produce desirable content are drastically outnumbered by the number of consumers, so I’m very guarded about any rhetoric that fixates on consumer rights at the cost of producer rights. Naturally they don’t get an equal voice.