> Should Dr. Lui really know how to handle the situation where an international, billion dollar company steals his art from a blog he wrote?
Yes, he obviously cares enough to write a big blog post; he shouldn't have done that, instead he should've gotten a solicitor and gone through the proper legal channels. If he's lucky he'd get a regular one-time payment for use of the pictures. If he's really lucky those would end up a bit higher than the cost for the legal procedures.
OK let's say you are a private person in the USA and want a solicitor for legal action against Australian company. Where would you even start? How much is that going to cost you? How is that more reasonable than leveraging social media?
Social media can’t file a lawsuit and a lawsuit is how you solve these issues. You have to prove infringement, you have to present evidence. You don’t “try” your case on the phone with Netflix. You file a lawsuit, you wait for an answer and then typically you settle out of court. Copyright infringement that is easily proven against a company like Netflix would be a slam dunk case — there would be attorneys that would take that on a contingency basis because it would be so easy: likely two or three letters sent and a stop by the courthouse to file the lawsuit — then a settlement offer of $5000 or so, with $1800 going to the attorney for barely 2 hours work.
You don't start with a lawyer. You start with a letter before action, which sets out what they've done wrong and what you want them to do about it.
This is very simple. There are plenty of example online. It would be roughly "I created, and own, these images. You've used them without permission, for a commercial use. You understand the importance of IP and copyright, and you defend your own rights. I'd like you to buy a licence at my standard rate of $X, plus a Y% uplift for commercial use by an organisation that should know better. I expect payment within 28 days."
When you're interacting with big corporations you need to speak their language. We see this in claims of copyright infringement, but also in open source projects that don't get donations from big corps - because they don't offer the "order, invoice, payment" cycle that corporations expect.
Yes, he obviously cares enough to write a big blog post; he shouldn't have done that, instead he should've gotten a solicitor and gone through the proper legal channels. If he's lucky he'd get a regular one-time payment for use of the pictures. If he's really lucky those would end up a bit higher than the cost for the legal procedures.