Why can 'guests' not read the forum?

[Halz]

This is the only forum I know of that does this

[West]

You need to be a member to view the Gallery or the Reviews section as well. We need members in order to become a profitable. Sorry if this anoys you. Better that guests cant view the forums, then to have no zilvia.net at all...

[240Dave]

240sxforums does this too. It IS annoying, and a turnoff, but nessisary. When people upload pictures, they can get the url and post them somewhere else. This takes the hosting servers bandwidth w/out any return (hits, viewed ad's, etc...) If only members can view the image, then nobody will be able to see if when it's posted somewhere else.
As long as membership stays free, I don't think it's too bad to make someone spend 5min signing up before they can view the forums.