Why it's an issue
After 8 minutes to a day a post can't be edited.
So people might have thousands of old posts that are not "useless". They can only continue using their images by paying the $400.
Alternate better solutions only work for the future. I decided an ISP solution was bad about 2001 or 2002 and realised I needed a bunch of domain names. They still work when you change provider.
But for EXISTING posts on 3rd party websites, people need to pay the $400 to keep the images. It seems a bit greedy and counterproductive, surely they would have more than 8 times as many customers at $50 p.a.
Unless maybe they are flogging the business next week and don't care.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
