The specific way intellectual property law can conflict with "how computers work" has to do with caching.

Your browser (Internet Explorer, Netscape, Opera, et cetera) uses your hard disk to store HTML pages, putting them into a special folder on your disk. The first time you ask for an HTML page, your browser renders it and a copy of it is also stored on your disk. The next time you request access to this page, your browser checks if the date of the file on the Internet is newer than the one cached. If the date is the same, your browser uses the one on your hard disk instead of downloading it from Internet. In this case, the smaller but faster memory system is your hard disk and the larger and slower one is the Internet.

The problem here is to DO that your computer is making a "copy" of the html page, including all images ON the web page. Your computer is not doing this maliciously, nor is it doing this to make a profit (if it is my computer sure isn't sharing any of it with me!). It does this just to speed up your ability to access the internet.

Technically, therefore, everyone's computer is making an unauthorized copy of a copyrighted work. Most internet providers understand that and don't mind. A few people, however, DO object whenever their work is copied. And, technically, they are in the legal right.

The solution, in order to keep websites like AW from being sued all the time, is adding a disclaimer of the type AW now uses. You still OWN your images. But people can cache anything you put up without them (and Jot) worrying about lawsuits.