Malspie,
Got your point on not allowing everyone to download photos and taking prior permission of the site to access the same.
Let me clarify a couple of things...
1. With the new member status changes that we announced
here, not all of us here can access the photos (for that matter any attachment). Only those members who have stayed and participated in this community for some time and hit 50+ posts can even view, then download & save attachments. Assuming by the time they make 50 posts, we would have identified whether a member is genuine or a spammer/spoof and would have moderated accordingly.
2. Non-members i.e. visitors who are not registered heer do not have access to even viewing attachments.
3. Now, if you are talking about restricting access to attachments by permission even for those members with 50+ posts, right now we don't have that capacity. We will soon be upgrading our forum software which will have a "private album feature". With this feature, a member can create their own album uploading personal photos too and can control access to it by including those members they wish in their buddy list.
On implementing this new feature, we will be moving even the existing member photos into such private albums.
Hope this clarifies.