$1000 is an hour (maybe two) of attorneys time to draft the response. It was incurred after the photographer received a “free” letter saying “this is legal if you pursue we are legally entitled to recoup fees from you, so please don’t.”
But you won't me convince me that such a routine letter required 2 hours of work at what is probably the top 0.1% wage rate in the nation as a "necessary" cost.
A company that routinely crawls millions of websites can't send a form letter for less than $1000 a pop? Don't buy it. Scam.
Yes the final letter can be written in 5 minutes by ChatGPT these days. It's the homework that comes before then that takes the time.
At a normal lawyer rate of Eur 300/hour * one morning (or afternoon) of 4 hours of work, that sounds about right?
This enters the “lawyer time” world where it seems crazy to you and me, but they will describe all the rules and customs that show exactly how this time is permissible. And they’ll bill you for the time that they describe it to you.
It’s not that they can’t send the letter for less than $1000. It’s that they don’t have to, and have no motivation or incentive to do so. And why would they? What’s their benefit for cutting costs? And the risk is they mess something up. Therefore, they spend an hour or two and bill the time.
This sucks, but what are you going to do? You could petition the EU to set a statutory level for damages and fix the remedy at that amount. Good luck with that.
I actually think that $1000 is them being nice as if it was RIAA they’d probably bring in 20 lawyers to review the letter and bill $20k.