It's still incredibly easy to take an image if 
someone wants it.. so I always thought all these 
steps against it were silly and do nothing but 
annoy the "honest" users.  Now the scans take 
longer to load for me and look worse, as you 
said. 

If someone doesn't want the risk of people 
taking their images, then they shouldn't post 
them online.  Sure, you can "request" that 
people not steal them, and threaten them all you 
want, but the bottom line is that some people 
will do it anyway and you choose to deal with 
that if you post anything online.