I can confirm officially that pics that have been posted on this forum are NOT public. Candace is right, you have to sign up to the forum to be able to see any of the pictures that are attached, so we're safe there.
Again I think they are just covering their behinds to make sure that they can indeed have full rights to use the photo and that no "prior art" claims can be made against it. I can pretty much guarantee that they are not checking every photo and in fact that they are probably not checking ANY photo .. it would be nearly impossible to do so. There's no tool that I know of that you can upload a photo to and say "find me any copies of this photo on the internet"
