Leosghost - 1:08 am on Oct 8, 2012 (gmt 0)

image owners have the powers to block Google from taking their content.

The problem with that "argument" is ..image owners can block Google from their images..but if their images are screen scraped by others either by individual webmasters "manually"..or "automated screencapture bots" or "crowd sourced" ( thinking of pinterest etc here )..then Google just takes them from their "new homes"..

G are doing this already when showing Pinterest higher for people's images then the originators..the Louvre example could well have been screen capped this way..
I went into more detail on this problem here [webmasterworld.com...]
msg:4499520 ..G do not use images from Getty etc in "carousel"..to do so would get them into major lawsuits with others who also have very deep legal pockets..

Google possesses, and uses the image comparison technology that they have, to identify the images from what I refer to as the "big dogs" of the various "image banks"..but they chose not to apply that same technology to the images in their indexes , to identify images "stolen" from smaller webmasters, and not use them in "carousel"..

Displaying copyrighted images is neither here or there tbh

Spoken like someone who does not make their living from creating copyright images, graphics and designs..one cannot scrape a snippet of an image..once one's image work is scraped / screen capped..it is entirely gone, there is no incentive to a searcher to click through 3 pages to get to the "source"..scraping images directly by the search engines can be blocked..the same search engines doing their scraping by proxy from the sites ( or crowd sourced mega sites ) of ones dishonest visitors, one cannot stop, because one would have to block all visitors..or control their computers via scripts ( which as I have posted elsewhere here, I have, but which reproduce the effects of malware, blocking "print screen" and access to cache, on all OSs /platforms does that )..or heavily watermark images so that they become too unattractive to be stolen..

Or use java and applets to load images into specially constructed pages or image secure browsers as one company does..not the friendliest of experiences for honest visitors..

Google could stop image theft easily with the tech they already have, and that would also prevent them using 3rd party copyright images "inadvertently" "found" on the web..in "classical image search" or "carousel"..but they don't, because they know how much more attractive images are than plain text, and wikipedia does not have enough copyright free images to feed "knowledge graph"..so Google steals our images that we have blocked direct access to Google from.. by proxy..

They even asked the UK government to allow them to be exempt from image copyright laws..if the images were "orphan"..meaning if Google could not "attribute" them..they neglected to mention that uploading them to Google strips meta data..and that their own image bots do the same..so any image without a watermark was "fair game" to be called "orphan" and used..they even made an alliance with the BBC and the large newspaper companies to be come the custodians of "orphaned" images..meaning that if one did not register ones images with them..one could not stop them using them as they wished..for knowledge graph or any other use..

More or less their "books" project ..but for images..

Those of us who are image makers, watch what the search engines and "big media" are doing very very closely ..and we pay special attention to Google..they are trying every way they can to get their hands on, and their ads around our IP,.. for free..even when we have expressly blocked them , as they said we should if we wanted to keep them out, directly..

(and one less click/search away)

It is one less click away at the beginning for the searcher ..but it moves the site upon which the image resides, 3 clicks further way from the searcher ..and each of those extra clicks has adwords around..whereas the classic Google image search ..doesn't..