Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer. This is absolutely not fair use by the legal definition. There is a very difficult four-prong legal test that must be applied to

Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer. This is absolutely not fair use by the legal definition. There is a very difficult four-prong legal test that must be applied to any usage before it qualifies as a legal "fair use". The term "fair use" really sets people at an undeserved ease around copyright because they make just such conclusions as you've made here: if it seems like the infringement wasn't a big deal, then it's "fair" enough, and everything's OK. The reality is that copyright is very draconian, so much so that were it uniformly enforced, most of the things you like about the internet would not exist. Netflix is a big boy and should play by the same big boy rules that they love to impose on small creators. There is no reason they couldn't pay a license fee. If the photographer's demand was unreasonable, they could find another photo of a VHS tape that was priced according to their liking and license it legally. It's not like they're rare. BigCorps lean on their hotshot $1000/hr law firms to bully and push around the little guy all the time. They'll threaten to sue you into the ground no matter what you do, whether they're trying to stop you from competing against them on dubious grounds that require a massive VC warchest to afford to fight, or whether they're trying to stop you from asserting your own legal rights when their conduct has violated them, again attempting, and almost always succeeding, at making the fight far more expensive than any possible damage award. (This discrepancy is where the concept of punitive damages comes from, a legal feature that is exclusively American). I hate seeing companies play both sides of this. I love it when a little guy is able to get the gumption and cash together to teach them a lesson. I just wish it could happen more often, because small creators getting blatantly ripped off by giant companies is no rare thing.