You might be right - I've never been in the situation - but he claimed to have taken it from some other site without any obvious copyright notice. Obviously not a smart move, and he did pay a price for it. The whole topic got brought up because I was planning on interviewing in one of their Rails shops and by doing research on the company I had stumbled across stories of people that had this exact thing happen to him, so I was shocked when he explained that it had happened to him as well.
I don't think the "fee" is unreasonable if a few hundred dollars is the going rate for licensing the image (although I personally would never pay that much), I just find the automated process of hunting these people down and asking for money right away (no option to just take it down immediately) a little distasteful, and in a similar vein to the RIAA's tactics.
Did that daycare owner really cause a harm worth hundreds of dollars - was the picture devalued that much by posting it on a micro website visited by maybe a dozen people? I think it helps to be a little objective here. I mean, I'm as capitalist as the next guy, but I fail to see how taking taking hundreds of dollars away from a small business owner who is technologically naive is correcting an imbalance in the free market.
It's a slippery path from there to charging arbitrarily ridiculous amounts like [$15K][1] for a violation, leading to insane lump sum damage amounts like [$75 trillion][2].
I won't argue about amounts, just the principle behind it.
I don't think it's got anything to do with devaluing the image by posting it on a micro website, so much as recognizing potential commercial value on someone else's work, without giving them their due.
If this had not been a business (like folks downloading mp3s, and not reselling them), I'd probably think about it differently, but in this case, there was specifically a commercial intent.
I agree the $15k / $75T thing is beyond ridiculous, especially given the non-commercial nature of that infringement. We're not arguing there.
I'm arguing 'oops, I'm sorry I made money using your work without paying you' isn't good enough. Who knows, maybe it could have been $5 - the sum isn't the important part, it's the principle.
I don't think the "fee" is unreasonable if a few hundred dollars is the going rate for licensing the image (although I personally would never pay that much), I just find the automated process of hunting these people down and asking for money right away (no option to just take it down immediately) a little distasteful, and in a similar vein to the RIAA's tactics.