Hey Essencay,
A conservative who voted for Bush, isn't that a bit contradictory? I thought conservatives believed in minimal powers for the federal government, and fiscal responsibility (or conservatism). Politics and joking aside, it occured to me that the subject matter might be the source of your dismay rather than "skin spamming" in general because of the examples that you provided, I apologize if I came to the wrong conclusion.
The comment about downloads was not directed at you, it was directed at one of the people who replied, and made the claim that these were posted by people who just wanted to accumulate downloads, which, while I cannot say with certainty that they are incorrect, I cannot see the logic in posting something solely for the purpose of accumulating downloads.
I do agree with the basis of your argument, however, there is more (however little) to creating a bootskin or login screen, and some people may just not be willing to give it a try. The solution that I would propose to the perceived problem, rather than simply disallowing anything that is not "original artwork", is to categorize the relevant sections into original artwork and rehashes of existing material. That said, there are limits in my mind on what is acceptable - there is a difference in my mind between going to DeviantArt and downloading a nice wallpaper that someone worked hard on making, converting it to a bootscreen and slapping your own name on it, and creating a bootscreen from a more "mainstream" poster type image, whether it be of a sweaty Britney Spears, or the newest publicity hungry wallpaper from Apple, though there is room for debate on the matter of what is fair game for plagiarism, and indeed, what actually consistutes plagiarism. The answer to that question for me is fairly simple - if it's the work of a private author, then it's not fair game, if it's an image done for publicity purposes, whether it be of latest ill conceived teenage role model Paris Hilton, who was described to a tee in a recent episode of South Park (though I doubt that some of the more malicious words for stupid spoiled lady of ill repute would be happily received on this forum), or a picture of the latest fantastic plastic Mac on a white background, then it's fair game. My reasoning is also simple, the "publicity" images were created solely for the purpose of generating publicity, so turning them into various types of skins is doing nothing other than furthering the goals of the owners. Of course, that's a debate that's been had here many times before, and could go on for a very long time...
Cheers,
AJ
