Forgive my rhetorical flourish, he actually did have lawyer who consulted on this. I don't have the complete information, because it wasn't a situation in which I was directly involved, but from what I (vaguely) understand about Google's ContentID and DMCA process he followed the procedure to dispute the claim and went as far as he could without suing, as he did not consider the cost to be worth it, having moved on to something else.