OP should totally throw Netflix to the wolves, he should send a cease and desist letter to every store stocking these, and the service providers of every website advertising these.
Netflix enforces it's copyrights through the legal system - regardless of how humorous - and fail to comply with it themselves? Complete hypocrites, I still wonder how corporations get so much leeway in this country. Honestly, IP infringement like this from a company like Netflix should involve a 10x penalty; the onus should be on them - as people who regularly use the IP systems for profit - to get it right.
> he should send a cease and desist letter to every store stocking these
He's just a regular guy. I don't think he's going to be able to pull that off.
I think you're probably lashing out a bit hard at something that was probably unintentional. They should absolutely pull it back now that they know they've infringed, but (as pointed out in the comments) there a quick reverse search reveals many mirrors of the image. The person who pulled it may have even gotten it off a site that offered "free use," though they didn't actually own the image.
As far as 10x punishment and them using IP systems for a profit? 10x what measurement? And when has Netflix used IP for profit? I wasn't able to find any relevant cases from a quick search.
Their entire business model is around selling access to protected IP. (Skip to the last sentence to skip the angry rant).
They lobby for DRM and the weakening of security systems to protect their profit, and in doing so are asking others to trust them (or by proxy companies that implement it, like Intel), to get it right.
And yet they can't make a cardboard box without failing to respect the intellectual property of others? When they should know better? When they lobby against people pirating their copyrights? When they (or lobbies that they help fund anyway) ask for additional powers in prosecuting these violations? Why do they get a pass just because of their size?
Under the accounting systems used by lawyers they have funded, they should owe this person millions of dollars (each violation should be counted separately, at x3 for punitive damages, if they distributed 1000 copies, they would owe the author 2 million in damages; in bit-torrent cases they've done this to charge students who shared an album 31 times with hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines; and yes that was sustained on appeal).
They've ruined peoples lives with these ridiculous calculations. You're right I am angry. They should face serious crippling fines in return for actually profiting off of this copyright violation. Oh wait, they've actually (helped) make a felony (through their lobbying contributions) of that. They should go to jail, like the copyright violators they send to jail (is that ridiculous? of course it is, but people are in jail because of it, the companies who help lobby for these things should face the same jail time, even a 10x of their own ridiculous accounting is being generous, executives should go to jail for this, people who pirate videos for profit do, what difference is a photo then?).
TL;DR: First time criminal copyright violations (knowingly distributing copyrighted material you don't own for profit (across state lines, because federal government); 18 U.S. Code § 2319) are up to 5 years in jail - Netflix helped pay for those strict punishments - I look forward to seeing who gets sent to jail for this crime when it's a big corporation instead of some university student.
I assume you are a copyright attorney and are thus speaking with good knowledge on the matter, and therefore are already aware of the legal precedent for the OPs case, and not just a wikipedia page.
Prior cases very similar to this one have successfully been tried in favor of the photographer.
Yup. IANAL, but Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp provides clear precedent. He may get $5k in FU hush money or $0 to discourage others from emulating the behavior.
Netflix enforces it's copyrights through the legal system - regardless of how humorous - and fail to comply with it themselves? Complete hypocrites, I still wonder how corporations get so much leeway in this country. Honestly, IP infringement like this from a company like Netflix should involve a 10x penalty; the onus should be on them - as people who regularly use the IP systems for profit - to get it right.