Is it possible to collect damages for free content? Some content, especially online, is freely available, such as many pictures, Creative Commons content, and video game modifications. If the creator never makes any money from selling said content, is it still possible for him to collect statutory damages upon copyright infringement? It would seem that actual damages would be $0, and so not possible to collect.
First, a clarification: statutory damages are damages that are prescribed by the statute rather than being based on actual loss. In both Canada and the U.S. even if the copyright owner was not attempting to profit from the work (thus realizing no actual damages), they could recover any of the infringer's profits that are attributable to the infringement. (17 U.S.C. §504, Copyright Act s. 35) In both Canada and the U.S., the copyright owner can elect to recover statutory damages (described below) instead of actual damages and profits. Even if there are actual damages and profits that the plaintiff could recover, the extra effort and cost associated with proving those may cause a plaintiff decide to recover statutory damages instead. In the U.S., statutory damages can be sought if the infringed work was registered at the time of the infringement (roughly). (17 U.S.C. §412) Statutory damages range from $750 to $30000 per work. (17 U.S.C. §504) In Canada, registration is not required in order to be eligible for statutory damages. Statutory damages in Canada range from $500 to $20000 for all infringements in the proceedings if the infringement is commercial infringement, and from $500 to $5000 for all infringements in the proceedings otherwise. (Copyright Act s. 38.1)
The argument would have to be either a derivative work under copyright, or a trade dress/trademark claim. Neither sounds very solid at all. Neither copyright nor trade dress/trademark protect ideas like a TV format. They can only protect very similar expressions of an idea that necessarily flow one from the other and, for example, the game mechanics can't be protected by copyright.
The title of your question suggests that a patent is involved, but it isn't clear from the rest of your question if that is really the case. Simply seeing a product on the internet does not mean that there are any patent rights attached to it. If a patent does exist, then that patent's protection is defined by its claims. In the US, if you make or use an object that includes all the elements of the claims of a granted patent, then you are infringing that patent. It does not matter whether you share the object or attempt to make money from it—simply making or using it is enough to qualify as infringement. That said, based on your intended use, the patent owner is highly unlikely to ever find out about your infringement. Further, even if they did, enforcing patent rights in court is incredibly expensive (typically involving multi-million dollar legal budgets), and they wouldn't stand to recover much from you, so it is even less likely that they would sue you for the infringement.
No. There are certain provisions of section 230 that carve out what liability these companies have for third party (i.e. User) speech on their web pages in 230(e). 230(e)(2) says that nothing in Section 230 may be construed to limit or expand laws reguarding intellectual property. These services are still on the hook if users post trademark or copyright infringing material to the site. Other such matters similarly not permitted include obscenities laws, exploitation of children laws, state laws, communications privacy laws, and sex trafficing laws. As a special note that section 230 was created to allow for emerging internet technologies and buisness to not have to worry about third party speech on their platform from holding them liable as a publisher. Thus, if I was to sue youtube for defamation of character based on a video you uploaded, calling me a Sith Lord, I could not sue Youtube (who has lots of money) but would rather have to sue you (who I presume does not have lots of money... at least not youtube/Google levels of money). Thus youtube cannot be civilily liable. It can still be criminally liable and liable for copyright infringement.
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There doesn't need to be any copyright claim for there to be copyright protection. The protection is given automatically whenever someone authors a work. If you make money off of your improved version, the owner of the page may sue you for royalties. The only way to avoid this is to ask him for permission, or to create your page without using any of the source code of the original page.
This kind of piracy is unfortunately common. When your copyright has been violated, your available response is to sue the infringer. Yes, this costs money, and yes, many infringers get away with it. In the Free Software/Open Source community, a couple of actors including the FSF, gpl-violations.org/Harald Welte, and the Software Freedom Conservancy have sued GPL infringers. But they can only do that for copyrights that they hold themselves. For example, the FSF holds copyright for the GNU userland, whereas Welte and Conservancy hold copyright for parts of the Linux kernel. They do not hold copyright for your software so they cannot enforce the AGPL license on your behalf. What can be done fairly easily is to file a takedown request with platforms that host the infringing content. Under various safe harbor laws including the US DMCA, a platform is not responsible if they accidentally host infringing content uploaded by users. However, the platform has to take the content down if they're notified that the content is infringing. For example, you could file a DMCA takedown request with GitHub to take down their repository, in case they are using GitHub. The drawback is that a takedown notice can be contested by the alleged infringer, in which case the content is reinstated and you would have to sue. The platform is not allowed to make its own determination about whether you or the infringer is right.
The issue you identify isn't really a copyright issue. The same issue would arise if the product contained public domain images in the advertisements that aren't present in the work itself. Essentially, the question comes down to whether there was actionable deceptive advertising. Usually, these claims arise under specialized consumer protection statutes that offer remedies and means of enforcement different from an individualized fraud lawsuit, and usually a deceptive advertising claim is easier to prove than traditional fraud lawsuit. Traditional fraud lawsuits normally require a showing of damages caused by reasonable reliance upon the misrepresentation, which is uneconomic to prove in the case of an individual small consumer purchase. Usually, deceptive advertising of consumer products is established in a lawsuit by a government official in charge of regulating deceptive advertising or a class action lawsuit, and often statutory damages are assigned to each violation rather than requiring detailed proof of economic harm for compensatory damages from some but not other images being present. Often fine print in the advertisement or in a purchase form before buying the product discloses the disconnect. Also, the mere presence of an image in an advertisement doesn't necessary imply that it is included in the product. So prove of deceptive advertising liability in these cases is often difficult even with these relaxed standards. There are many gray area and close cases, and often, businesses settle these lawsuits rather than litigating them. A more specific answer would require knowledge of which jurisdiction's laws apply, which is often a non-trivial question in Internet based advertising lawsuits.