Might I also add that I am seeing this trend on websites where the content is not stellar anyways. Maybe that is my experience but I see this a lot on low quality wordpress and blogger websites.

I am not sure why this trend is starting but it is a rather annoying one especially when attempting to troubleshoot a problem with someone else's website. In all honestly the websites using this are not the ones content is going to be taken from if I want full length articles over current events I am going to CNN as they dont use some this this absurd and I would take that content.

I am not saying that I do steal content from sites but I am not sure why some owners do this nonsense. I also leave websites that shows the large and annoying DMCA lock because it is sharing information that everybody knows. Then u get the really rare websites that show off the lock copy scape and prevent the items listed in the article and I won't even bother.

Typically websites (from my experience) are offering low quality content and are trying to protect it as if it were more valuable than gold.