I don't think he should go to jail, but this is an odd rebuttal. If I steal your car and sell it for $300, because I don't really need more money, will you claim just that amount as your loss?
Obviously copyright law pushes up the price, by introducing scarcity, but that doesn't really have anything to do with how much he made.
If you steal my car, I no longer have a car. I would need to go out and buy another car to replace it.
If you copy my data (a photo, a song, a film), I haven't lost the original. Only my business model has been affected, which was based on scarcity of the data.
Yes in the analogy the person will claim for the cost of replacing the vehicle.
But a company claiming they lost media revenue to me of anything greater than what I can afford is also wrong. In a world of perfect copyright infringement prevention I'd just miss out on most of the mainstream social culture.
In a fair system they'd have to prove those damages, but alas, copyright laws often include "statutory damage" provisions to help them avoid that requirement.
i.e., messing up their business model
> Copyright is both a criminal and civil matter.
Sure, but there's a strong case that copyright infringement shouldn't be felony.
> ...the damages are in the millions and the defendant isn't very wealthy.
If the defendant isn't wealthy after distributing all that content, is the content worth millions? Or is the government-enforced business model worth millions?