Fraud is a crime. Criminal copyright infringement is a crime.
If amazon were to take your money and not deliver, and it can be proven they did so intentionally, never intended to deliver, they would face criminal charges for fraud.
If Disney, as is alleged here, is "willfully and for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain"[0] using other people's works, that's criminal copyright infringement.
They say they have the right to exploit these works commercially through contracts, but at the same time say the contracts do not apply to them. So either the contracts do not apply, in which case they have no right to commercial exploitation and therefore commit criminal copyright infringement, or the contracts do apply and they are criminally defrauding the authors.
Comments
Fraud is a crime. Criminal copyright infringement is a crime.
If amazon were to take your money and not deliver, and it can be proven they did so intentionally, never intended to deliver, they would face criminal charges for fraud.
If Disney, as is alleged here, is "willfully and for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain"[0] using other people's works, that's criminal copyright infringement.
They say they have the right to exploit these works commercially through contracts, but at the same time say the contracts do not apply to them. So either the contracts do not apply, in which case they have no right to commercial exploitation and therefore commit criminal copyright infringement, or the contracts do apply and they are criminally defrauding the authors.
[0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/506