The comment justified anonymous access with "item ids are unguessable".
That is not true: an artist id is a deterministic, unsalted hash of the
artist name, id.NewHash(id.NewHash(str.Clear(lower(name)))), so it is
computable offline by anyone who knows the name.
The real reason the route is public is that upstream Jellyfin's is too.
ImageController.GetItemImage carries no [Authorize] attribute (verified on
v12.0, master/13.0.0, v10.11.9 and v10.10.7), and an anonymous request
reaches LibraryManager.ItemIsVisible with a null user, which returns true
unconditionally. Clients build cover URLs with no credentials at all, so
requiring auth here would break them.
No behavior change.