I guess that someone had tried to attack the forum via the Avatar feature earlier and hence they do not allow to upload an image via a URL as one can upload a virus as well. The feature of uploading pictures via the PC makes it safer.
It would seem the main reason for this would be it's a file someone did not want on their computer, virus or otherwise.
Thank you to the forums and all involved in turning them back on. But in my little experience I had to download photos and make them a better size for avatars. If you had a upload feature most images would not fit or fall within rules. So it seems like it would take extra software on forums to edit pictures from urls. Which is really extra money spent on the forum that most likely could be used for better things.
