You can have very high chance to get sent to court if your book cover is using copyrighted image and the book itself manage to become international bestseller for quite a long time.
Or if you're selling clothes/physical object that contains copyrighted imagery, and the author of the image has enough follower to gain awareness and support against the product, plus support of the online shop platform that the stealer use.
But if it's just your pathetic web novel cover, you may as well use it without shame since no one can actually care.
The worst scenario is a influential image creator didn't contact you and going straight to accuse you 'rightly' to make sure people boycott your stories and other works, and report it
en-
masse.
if your story is being published and promoted on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social medias, they can attack you using standar social media attacks.
But really, in practice, you can use copyrighted image until your story gain enough audience and money, and then pay some good designer on Fiverr/somewhere to make good image cover that resemble the old image or even better personalized cover.
make sure you don't criticize the designer too hard, if you don't really know how modern design actually works. You just need to convey how the novel is about, the general lines, the plot right now, the plot back then, and the plot in the future, how you want people to see it, and how you as the author see it. The design will be quite costly, and it will be even more expensive if the design has to contain several messages, but it's defined worth it if the story you write is that good and manage to gain audiences.
anyways, that the non specific vague plausible nonsense with no clear advice that I can give you.
Oh and by the way, don't believe in BS buying copyrights from middlemen, those fuckers are cheats.
Yep, I also didn't believe in buying copyright of existing image. NFT sucks.
It's always better to use the money for professional services to design personalized book covers, anime style cover, and other paid services to make your needed image.
