If you pay attention to such things, you'll soon realise, while browsing the blogosphere, that very few of the images you see are created by the people whose pages you're visiting. Image theft is rampant, to the extent that even those who realise it is wrong - that is, actually unlawful - seem to feel that it is now such common practice as to be acceptable. So why care?

Those, like me, who still find the energy to complain about this risk sounding like those godawful anti-piracy videos that annoy everybody watching DVDs. But I can't help feeling there is a qualitative difference. There are no photographers as rich as the Hollywood corporations, and none that pull down fees like the big stars.

And to be honest, it isn't even the potential income loss that bothers me. That's extremely hard to quantify, though it is a worry for anyone trying to carve a living from photography. No, it's the attitude of some of these image thieves that makes me both angry and sad.

Many images are stolen because someone wants a nice picture to illustrate a blog post and they cruise around the net until they find something suitable. I suspect the majority don't even realise they're stealing. This is wrong, but it's still not the kind of theft that annoys me most.

Some bloggers find an image they think is amazing and put it on their own site. Of course, they could have simply pointed visitors to the photographer's site: that way, the photographer, whose work the blogger so admires, would benefit from the traffic. But no, I guess that wouldn't satisfy the blogger's sense of self-importance. 

But the really annoying petty thievery is the kind where someone fills a post with a selection of images, adds a brief comment that amounts to little more than "hey look at these, they're cool" and then sits back to watch the Diggs or the Google Adsense clicks build up. (Incidentally, this means that Google itself is benefiting from this theft.)

The sheer indolence is breathtaking. What they are saying is this: "I have no thoughts in my head, I have nothing to say, I cannot create anything original of my own, but here's some excellent work by other people - now you can admire how brilliant I am for showing you this." 

Often, this is couched in terms of 'honouring' the photographers concerned. Right. As if these talented people will feel the slightest honour from having some creatively challenged, slackass blogger steal their work. And all too often, the thief doesn't even have the decency, or IQ, to credit the photographers. (Though let's be clear, a credit, even a link to the photographer's site, is not sufficient recompense. This is still theft.)

All these worthless bloggers are doing is attempting to cover themselves in glory using the hard work, talent, imagination and skill of other people - presumably because the blogger registers zero on the scale for all those attributes. War pictures feature frequently, which means that the bloggers are also taking advantage of the risks and hardships the photographer has endured in creating these images.

Most, if not all, of the photographers whose work is exploited in this way are freelance. They survive by being paid for the images they create. The general rule with stock photography is that the value of an image is diminished each time it is used - because potential buyers of imagery do not want to use photographs that everyone has seen before. By stealing photographers' work in this way, bloggers are making it harder for those photographers to earn a living from their efforts.

This is especially ironic with those blog posts that purport to show the images because they 'respect' or 'admire' either the photographer or the work. I saw one particular post where the blogger displayed a number of documentary images - many of them quite famous and iconic - alongside some pompous piffle about bringing the images to the world's attention and 'supporting' the work of the photographers. In fact, the cumulative effect of this kind of lazy pilfering is to make it more difficult for documentary photographers to make a living. In other words, these bloggers are helping to kill the kind of photography they claim to admire. This is no exaggeration: editorial photography is under threat of extinction (the subject of a blog post I'm preparing at the moment).

These bloggers fall into a number of categories. Some are simply ignorant of copyright laws. That's no excuse, but occasionally, when their transgression is pointed out to them, they are at least willing to correct it.

Others have a dangerously little knowledge. When challenged, they will claim that the pictures are being used under 'fair use' provisions. This is, of course, complete nonsense. Fair use does not allow such publication of complete images, and never has. Even where the image is being 'reviewed', permission is needed to reproduce it. These bloggers can be among the more arrogant because they think they know something about copyright law when, in fact, they are almost entirely ignorant of how it operates.

Then there are those who know they are committing copyright theft and simply don't care. Occasionally, they will try to justify their arrogance with some internet-era gibberish like 'information wants to be free' (the mantra of those whose livelihood does not depend on intellectual property rights - that is, people who only take and consume, who don't create). Typically, these people regard copyright itself as somehow old-fashioned or even evil. I suspect the majority are adolescents (in mental capacity, if not age) who feel they should have whatever they want, when they want it.

From time to time, I leave a comment on these sites pointing out what the blogger has done. The response is often the kind of sub-literate, adolescent outburst that makes one wonder whether the internet is the natural habitat of Tourette Syndrome sufferers. Of course, given the degree of laziness, arrogance and stupidity that the bloggers have already demonstrated in making these posts, a high level of immaturity in dealing with those who point out their errors isn't really surprising.

All ecosystems have their parasites, and the internet is no different. What's needed is some mechanism for pest control. Quite what that would be, I've no idea, but perhaps it's time to stop putting up with this particular nuisance.