[makomk]

If this changes small creators like The Oatmeal won't stand a chance. He bootstrapped the success of his website in large part through Reddit, which is of course a commercial site based around user-submitted content that allows and profits from a ton of copyright infringement. Stopping people from infringing your copyright is no good if no-one ever finds out about your content.

Obviously this doesn't matter to The Oatmeal anymore - everyone's heard of The Oatmeal by now, and preventing competitors from becoming well-known is probably good for profits - but it's not great for the internet in general. Probably wouldn't be good for YCombinator either.

[snowwrestler]

I don't think you've thought this through.

The difference between Reddit and FunnyJunk is that FunnyJunk actually hosts the image files on the FunnyJunk server, keeping visitors there.

Reddit does not host anything but text--when you post an "image" to Reddit, you're really just posting a link. This drives the traffic to The Oatmeal (or whoever), who can then monetize it.

Reddit is an example of a web startup doing it right. They drive tons of traffic around the web. Techmeme is another, and so is Hacker News.