I teach my students to find an existing url that has the image they want, then simply embed the url in their Hive post. And also include an Image Source link with the same url.
Under that scenario, the owner of the site hosting the image bears the liability for any copyright infringement.
The downside of this approach is that the link could go dark sometime in the future. However, if that happens you can update the post with a new link to a new image.
The problem with embedding an image from another site beyond it later being removed or worse someone decided to replace it with another image and the same file name... you know... a racy image.... is that if the original image was indeed copyright or a copyright violation... it just created another violation on the site where it's embedded.
Not according to U.S. copyright law. If someone publishes an image and they own the rights to that image and they display the copyright bug, I would be liable if I copy and paste the image. However, if I merely reference the image via the owner’s own url, no violation has occurred. See https://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/linking-copyrighted-materials
Under this circumstance, although the infringement does gain wider reach if I link to the url containing the copyright violation, there would only be a problem (for me) if I knew (or should have known) that the referenced material represented an infringement.
For example, linking to a site that promotes downloading pirated images or songs could make me a contributor (in the eyes of the law) to that site’s illegal activity.
To start by addressing what my post talked about, no matter how much justifying you do, if the post is in a community where the moderator objects to this behaviour, it will be downvoted or even muted.
Now to address the taking of images through using embedding instead of just straight up stealing.
People who create websites select their assets like images to enhance and draw visitors into their content. Often those assets are also part of their income.
For example, a photographer displaying images of his shots on his site to sell prints and items the image is printed on. You come along and decide one of those images would be great on your article so you link to it and embed it into your article because, well, you think the law says it's okay.
Every time someone visits your article in order for that image to load it does a call from the site where it's being stored.
So, instead of the image being used to promote the photographers work, you're using it to promote your work and stealing the value of the image from the photographer.
To add insult to injury, you're putting more load on the hosting account he's paying for and if his hosting is based on bandwidth, you're increasing the used bandwidth and taking money from his pocket.
Being rude to others is legal too.. I'm trusting you don't teach your students that is okay.