If this bug was accidentaly made by the new copper membership fee, then I suggest if you really want it badly, then pay for it again 
Do you have any reference for it? It looks like this is not a isolated case. People have posted at least 2 more accounts with the same issues.
Really want to know what happened
It is most likely not a recent bug looking at those users profile, maybe no one paid attention to it.
According to this post https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5058163.msg47860162#msg47860162 it shows that "alanst" has paid his Copper membership over 2months ago.
My actual concern is how the option to add avatar was made available in their forum profile settings, I'm a copper member and I can verify that such option isn't available in my profile settings.