1. You can't get righted in the eye of the law without money to enforce it... A lot of money.
2. Gough Lui is unemployed, see #1. Lack of money to be made whole/ court fees.
3. Gough Lui is from Australia. You think getting whole was hard in the same country - now try another one.
4. They could have afforded to ignore it. Now it's social media for 5 minutes. So they might, or might not. Not like they're going to sue. See #1, #2, #3.
1. Not true. An easy case like this and you can get a lawyer on contingency. I did that when I sued Equifax a few years back — a nice settlement and the lawyer took his cut.
2. Define what being made whole meant? Did he lose money from this photo being used? Did the future value of this photo get harmed? What was the value of the photo? What were the actual damages? As a stock photo, that image wouldn’t be worth much more than $50. Our of court “go-away” settlement would not exceed $5000 — because there aren’t any actual damages.
3. How was he made not whole? What are his actual damages?
I find it interesting that the HN community that hates DRM and thinks torrenting movies is ok seems to care so much about when Netflix effectively downloads an image and makes a derivative work — like a music remix. How many are demanding that DJs who make bootleg remixes and post then on SoundCloud pay the original artists damages? How many get furious when someone gets sued over violating a patent?
This is the same thing. But we are supposed to care differently just based on who is involved?
1. I can't fight an anecdote, and I won't. Finding an attorney who's willing to work on contingency is rare in my experiences. It also requires an attorney who's versed in that field of law (copyright). Lastly, they also need to find someone able and willing to navigate international law on top of copyright and willingness of contingency.
2. In tort law, you don't sue for blood and destruction of your enemies. You sue because you were wronged and are asking the court to be "Made Whole". Certain things may provide a damage multiplier if the case can be made of willfulness. Or there may be statutory damages if certain actions are done (Copyright infringement, with a note of copyright sent to the US copyright office with appropriate registration fee).
They were wronged by a commercial usage of a copyrighted artwork. This artwork is now used on a multitude (million+) copies.
As for your "As a stock photo, that image wouldn’t be worth much more than $50." - that's for a court to decide if they could afford to pursue legal means. And to claim there wasn't any "actual damages" is honestly laughable. 'Sorry artist, your work was pirated by a company to make profit on you, but no damages!"
3. Already answered that.
Side notes: you're conflating quite a few issues together. You're lumping in private copyright/patent breaking and corporate patent/copyright breaking activities together. There's also a widely accepted issue that copyright is too long. There's very little argument that copyright shouldn't exist.
However, DJ's can sidestep copyright by paying their ASCAP fees. That also allows them to remix ASCAP artists, and they can get paid (commercial) for it and also then pay the original creators as well. But music and radio has some very weird carve-outs that most non-musicians aren't aware of.
But aside the length of time arguments, when a company, whom has the money, chooses to break copyright of an individual artist, people do get very angry. And given the asymmetry, people get rightly angry.
A DJ making a bootleg DnB track for a dubplate or free release on SC, is somewhat different from a multi-national corporation copying someone's images for the premium edition of a boxed retail release of some of their flagship content. Your comparison is disingenuous.
Not least because a DJ's primary function is mixing together music.
Also for commercial release for sale in Target, they'd presumably get clearance on the samples.
And as for your "based on who is involved" rhetorical question, yeah it does matter, and it's not the same thing.
Ironically in the case, Netflix are pretty chill and PR savvy about this stuff.
But it's a company that rigorously defends its IP. It should be held to the same standard it expects.
2. Gough Lui is unemployed, see #1. Lack of money to be made whole/ court fees.
3. Gough Lui is from Australia. You think getting whole was hard in the same country - now try another one.
4. They could have afforded to ignore it. Now it's social media for 5 minutes. So they might, or might not. Not like they're going to sue. See #1, #2, #3.