I like Paint.NET. It’s a valuable resource. But the author is complicit in the spammy garbage. Turn off Adblock and try to download it.

The official PDN website has multiple giant fake “download” ads. Then if you manage to click the real download link it opens up a full screen interstitial ad that is also a fake download link. Close that out and you drop onto the “download” page, also full of fake download ads. Click through to “download from dotpdn” and enjoy yet another full page of fake download ads. If you make it through all this and then manage to click the real download link it’s just a link to the installer hosted on GitHub, which should have been linked from the main page.

This is all intentional and very scummy. I understand ads, but this is excessive and all the ads are at best some sort of bloatware garbage if not actively malware.

Victimized, not that many. Generally if you do domain squatting like this you try to appear "legitimate". Sell actual paint or whatever. Because the moment you try actually pretending to be the thing you aren't... well, this happens. Quick takedown, domain gets transferred to the actual owner of the trademark.