Why are the photographs (or videos?) counted against the storage limit

Now that Google seems to be leaning towards "Google Photos" or whatever they're going to call it, you can download your Picasa Web videos.

Here's how:

• Go to the Google+ version of your site ( http://www.google.com/+ ).
• On the left hand side, click on the "Photos" icon.
• Find and click on the album with the video you want to download.
• Find and click on the video you want to download.
• At the bottom, in the black part, will be the word "Options"; click on it.
• Download your video.

Maybe it wasn't clear in my question, but the contact pic albums only appear in my 'private feed' of albums.

Considering the above, and the lack of any answer to my question, I will assume that those albums appear here because of the fact that Google uses your unified 'Google Storage' for the high-res contact images, and they are exposed to the Picasaweb interface, much like the automatically uploaded smartphone pictures in Google+ Photos (and Picasaweb).

Feel free to correct this statement if you know of any details.