Exactly. "These days" you have 1 million photos of Eiffel tower, most look the same, bit blurry, not ideal lighting, etc. Yet you cannot really use them, unless

Exactly. "These days" you have 1 million photos of Eiffel tower, most look the same, bit blurry, not ideal lighting, etc. Yet you cannot really use them, unless you pay someone some amount of money, or you write an essay attributing them (and you spend 2 days figuring out what the license actually is for that piece of "art"). Say you want to make a t-shirt with a picture of Eiffel tower, with some catchy meme underneath, and sell it. You google/bing/whatnot for "picture of Eiffel tower", download the best looking image and silk print a t-shirt. Now, in an unlikely event it catches up, and you start selling in millions, what's going to happen? There's a good chance that you'll get a mail from someone who took that crappy picture and now demands a hefty sum in royalties. Well, just to avoid that, I take the picture. I don't care that there are millions of those taken already, they are not "mine". Yes, first-world problems, but they might be quire pricey. /rantover