Briefly, we have laws designed to protect intellectual property, that's what copyright laws do. Someone works hard, spends time, money and resources to develop something, be it the written word, a song, a movie or a photograph and others have no more right to steal or use this property than they would to go into your home and take your furniture. And it shouldn't matter whether the people creating this work are professionals or not. I write articles for newspapers. You are free to read them either there or on the Net. You are not free to copy them for your use without my granting you permission, that's just the way things work.
People also pay for the right to be on the Internet, we all do. If someone has a web site of any kind, they are paying for the right to let people see what they have. The more traffic they have the more bandwidth they use and normally, the higher the cost of being there are the results. That's an additional cost of doing business that will have to be paid by someone. There are sites that are there specifically to play host to anyone that wants to have their content show up as part of another site. They encourage direct linking, and usually anything on their site is open game, as was pointed out. Anyone posting there loses their rights of protection, but you know that going in. Most other sites are not as generous though. Direct linking uses up bandwidth of both the "host" and target sites and usually only benefits the target one. Creating a link on the other hand will also benefit the host site in that it will bring traffic to their site, and not just clip out a picture and post it elsewhere and as a result, not give credit to the originating site.
A lot of sites will not permit direct linking, and have software to protect against it. We have it here as well. We want people to come here and visit, we do not want to be a host site for pictures. Walther's, Atlas and other dealers are no different. They don't want to be a host for pictures, they want people to stop by and see what they have and possibly buy something. Like most manufacturer's catalogs, they don't cost you anything, but they sure wish you spend some money with them as a result of looking.
Just remember, everything in the Internet, on disk, on film or in books is protected unless it says differently. Remember also that the Internet itself is not free. Someone is paying for everything you see there.
People also pay for the right to be on the Internet, we all do. If someone has a web site of any kind, they are paying for the right to let people see what they have. The more traffic they have the more bandwidth they use and normally, the higher the cost of being there are the results. That's an additional cost of doing business that will have to be paid by someone. There are sites that are there specifically to play host to anyone that wants to have their content show up as part of another site. They encourage direct linking, and usually anything on their site is open game, as was pointed out. Anyone posting there loses their rights of protection, but you know that going in. Most other sites are not as generous though. Direct linking uses up bandwidth of both the "host" and target sites and usually only benefits the target one. Creating a link on the other hand will also benefit the host site in that it will bring traffic to their site, and not just clip out a picture and post it elsewhere and as a result, not give credit to the originating site.
A lot of sites will not permit direct linking, and have software to protect against it. We have it here as well. We want people to come here and visit, we do not want to be a host site for pictures. Walther's, Atlas and other dealers are no different. They don't want to be a host for pictures, they want people to stop by and see what they have and possibly buy something. Like most manufacturer's catalogs, they don't cost you anything, but they sure wish you spend some money with them as a result of looking.
Just remember, everything in the Internet, on disk, on film or in books is protected unless it says differently. Remember also that the Internet itself is not free. Someone is paying for everything you see there.