I'm not here to rehash those arguments, or present either side. I am, however, here to make your day, if you had a problem with this.
Enough complaints were sent to LJ Administration that they made a few code changes, and made it possible for you to opt out of that tool, thus saving your images from showing up there to be hotlinked elsewhere, etc.
All you need to do is bop over to the Admin Console and enter the following command: set latest_optout yes
That's it, you're out of the loop. Vaya con Dios, muchacho.
Pass it along.