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.