But in essence, anything that comes into your computer you could separate and store. Anyone can always try to make their system thief proof, but all that security comes at a cost. First you have to write it up in code, so it's an inconvienence for the artist. Secondly all those barriers just makes an unpleasant viewing experience for a visitor to the site. The example about the no-cache and reloading even thumbnails is an excellent example--no one likes to wait for a web page. Remember when the Renderosity galleries were slow. It was frustrating, and with that Renderosity has some serious bandwidth muscle.

But if someone is really concerned about it, don't make the image available. :-(