Uhh, no, that is not the case at all for copyright infringement cases. THJ is going to get assfucked here no lube. The only thing DBG has to prove is that THJ used their IP without authorization and received money for doing so, which, is a very simple discovery. The bullshit about damages is just to get the courts to give them even more beyond whatever THJ took in. Just the money taken in and DBG's law beast costs for all this is going to put a hurt on THJ. Now it may be puffery and smokescreens for DBG's investors as well, but the underlying case and law is cut and dry. THJ is going to be paying long and hard. Every penny donated + whatever "damages" + lawyer costs, their own and DBG's.
There is a possible positive outcome, where THJ is forced to keep their thing going to pay off their debt to DBG. Let those donations go towards that and server costs.
Copyright law is a little different than a normal damages case. A typical civil suit for damages the actual damages that occurred are important to demonstrate.
In a copyright case, if you can prove the infringement, you are entitled to what is called "statutory damages" per infringement, the statute lets you seek a per infringement amount of $750 up to $30,000. It is at the discretion of the trial judge to determine if the number the plaintiff requests in statutory damages is "just."
If any of you remember the RIAA cases against individuals peer-to-peer sharing songs back in the 00s, that is how those cases worked. They simply had to prove someone had shared say, 2000 copies of a song. That's 2000 infringements. They would send a letter basically saying "agree to settle with us for $3,000 or we are going to sue you for $750 per infringement, which will be $1.5m", faced with this prospect virtually every single person who the RIAA went after would ultimately settle for a few thousand bucks. The few who took it to trial lost bigly, the couple cases I remember they lost and had to pay the RIAA like $500,000+. If I remember the cases correctly the people who lost were basically indigent so they probably never actually paid anything, but it's still "less than ideal" to have a $500,000 debt someone is trying to collect from you.
The other, and likely more important element for DBG is what is called "injunctive relief." Based on the court filings DBG is seeking both damages and injunctive relief, but almost certainly injunctive relief is their primary motivation. Injunctive relief means a final court order that basically bars THJ and its named operators from doing certain things, which would be something like a court order telling them they can't operate or run THJ any longer. If they continued to do so at that point their problems get bigger than potentially owing money--they'd be in willful violation of a Federal judge's order. They can (and do) take steps including locking you up in jail until you comply if you refuse to obey a court order at that point.
If I had to guess their main motivation with damages is to use it as additional leverage, I could see a scenario where they win some arbitrarily high statutory damages, and agree to waive all or part of it if THJ signs a settlement agreement where they bend to all of DBG's demands and promise not to appeal etc.
