1. You should not pay before talking to a lawyer. The $168 could be a trojan horse to open you up to more liability. 2. Possibly but unlikely. 3. Yes. "Remove

1. You should not pay before talking to a lawyer. The $168 could be a trojan horse to open you up to more liability. 2. Possibly but unlikely. 3. Yes. "Removed as requested by $law_firm on behalf of CartoonStock.com" 4. No. The best course of action would be to remove the cartoon, check for any other infringing content on your site, and ignore the request. Any other action should be preceded by talking to a lawyer. Also keep in mind that there is a lot of ambiguity around linking - unless you were hosting the image, you didn't necessarily commit copyright infringement. Finally, if you do reply to the request in any way, do so from your home address.