Exactly - the price of that particular image switched to a higher tier just because they found a copyright infringement. This is the shady part. Back then I recall reading other threads about people in very similar situations. Unfortunately I'm not able to find those threads anymore, but I've found a Reddit post mentioning that Getty stopped with these shady practices when their CEO changed.
Edit: found something similar to what I mean [1], [2]
You could think of it as, it was bumped up to a higher tier because there is evidence that out of all their millions of stock photos, someone chose this one.
