I marked No in my preferences and tried testing this by looking at an image in my blog, but the Associate... link was still at the bottom. Is this because it is my own? I do not know how to test this otherwise.

The link will still be there, but anyone clicking on the link will see a message saying that this can't be done with this photo.

Thank you for answering this. I wasn't intending to participate in this, so wouldn't know what happens.

One little note: If you disabled this in your preferences, you can still associate your own images. But nobody else can.

Thanks, that's what I did.