I would have asked for something closer to a full refund and possibly a longer, if not lifetime, term of free usage.
It's obviously expensive for Flickr to offer something like this but I mean they accidentally deleted 5 years of a paying customers work. I think a refund is the bare minimum.
They have done that bare minimum. Flicker has already provided the guy with five years of hosting and linking - that doesn't just disappear because it's in the past. They provided the service that was paid for over those years.
Now they've made a mistake, and have refunded this years payment and added future access for free. They have done more than 'the bare minimum'. It might be good PR to refund previous years' fees, but they were at the time provided in good faith and competant manner; there is no 'fair exchange' reason to refund them.
even a lifetime of flickr wouldn't satisfy the authors request for compensation. a few hundred in flickr dollars is not worth thousands of lost photos.
It's obviously expensive for Flickr to offer something like this but I mean they accidentally deleted 5 years of a paying customers work. I think a refund is the bare minimum.