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The shady part is the part where the price of the image magically increases (on their website) as soon as they detect a copyright infringement, so that they can get even more money from you.

All in all, as stated in the original comment, I believe it's in their right to do so (because the copyright infringement happened), but they take advantage of this in a shady / scammy way

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That doesn’t seem shady. If you park in a meter, it may cost $3/hr. If you forget to pay the meter, the ticket may be $100. It needs to be more or it never makes sense to feed the meter.

It should be easy enough to prove if the image price itself changed, using archive.org or something. But if what you’re describing is just a penalty for using it without permission, I tend to agree with the others who feel that’s fair game. If the penalty for shoplifting was always that you had to pay for the merchandise you shoved in your pants, well, I think you’d see a lot less visiting of the check stand on the way out if you know what I mean.

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