> $200 for a $100 photo is totally reasonable; $1000 and he has no moral argument.

How do you figure? I think 10x is an entirely reasonable penalty for stealing* someone's work instead of paying for it lawfully. The MPAA demanded $30,000 for a $0.99 song, which I would say is completely unreasonable. But 10x seems pretty inline with a non-excessive penalty.

$200 probably wouldn't cover lawyers fees. From an amoral perspective, there's a simple cost function: (cost to buy) vs (chance of being caught * cost of damages). If you don't make the cost of damages high enough then the behavior will continue. [0]

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punitive_damages

He's licensing full-resolution digital images for around $400 a pop, so I'd say that asking infringers for a $1000 payment is easily fair and probably far too low. You are stealing his work and lawyers are not cheap.

Legal fees are likely more than $100 per image, so I imagine he's asking for licensing fee + legal fees + deterrent fee.

So probably closer to $1000, if not more.

Also, who said anything about morality? This is law, not philosophy. We're firmly planted on the 'is' side of 'is/ought', at this point.

$200 might be reasonable if two things were true:

1) There was no legal expense 2) He catches at least 50% of the violators

In that case, he would at least make as much as if there were no violators. However, he has legal costs, and probably only catches a fraction of the violators.

So the equation should be something close to:

(Price charged for violation - legal fees) * % chance of being caught = Original price of image

Yes he does. Dealing with copyright infringement can be very expensive and time consuming.

I agree. $999 is the moral limit.</sarcasm>

How do people develop this sort of attitude? It's completely illogical. Developers don't understand business?