Ability a toggle to hide all images from a particular group to guests and spiders/bots and replaced with a default image.

Some images that can be taken from the net can be uploaded by members not knowing that some are copyrighted and it seems there are a few unscrupulous companies out there that look for particular copyrighted images then send small businesses or innocent website owners an invoice for usage, and are very persistant and some nasty. Can range from £50 to £10,000. These companies send lot's are legal worded letters and threats and can affect some website owners who are vulnerable.

At least then google wont spider images so these companies cannot track them back. We recently got hit on one small image that has caused lot's of problems even though it was removed instantly. I am also seeing reports of spammers using images and the website owner is totally unaware, but still invoice for 1000's according to reviews on trustpilot.

Please consider this option please.

Most search engines frown on what could be perceived as cloaking/changing output based on whether it's a search engine or not. You will also lose out on the SEO benefits of Google image search.

I understand the concern over those companies looking for copyrighted image use, but ultimately user generated content will contain some copyrighted content eventually which is why a robust terms of service is a great idea.

3 hours ago, loccom said:

At least then google wont spider images so these companies cannot track them back.

You can tell Google to not index images through the robots.txt.