Tabberone's Hall of Shame - Copyright Scams

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Last Updated - January 13, 2010

We stumbled across this company while looking at Blackbird Creations (www.blackbird-creations.com). Their "copyright" link took us to this web site.

From the web site for Copyright Deposit (http://www.copyrightdeposit.com/website.htm):

REGISTER A COPYRIGHT FOR YOUR WEBSITE
ARCHIVE ALL VERSIONS OF YOUR CONTENT
600 megs per year of secure archiving
storage for your material

It appears that for a fee, not only will they "copyright" your web site, or blog, but periodic updates are stored as well. Nowhere do they actually say they register your copyright with the copyright office, which it appears they do not, but the above wording certainly gives on the impression that they do. The fee they collect, $14.00, is way short of the $35.00 fee required by the copyright office for registration. We get the same impression from the following:

The title and description of your creation, or work, are noted on your copyright, but the content (E.g.: the text of a novel) is filed in our secure server without being read. [emphasis added]

For the paltry sum of $14.00 US, they offer you and your web site copyright protection that includes:

Any copyright court litigation will see all documents in our hands legaly (sic) sign (sic) by a notary, at our charge.

Since English doesn't appear to be their first language, we would be very suspicious about them. The CEO of this rip-off comapny is one Pierre Mercier. Not unexpected since the address for Copyright Deposit is 3885 2nd Street North, ST-Georges, QC, Canada. What baffles us is their Legal Advisor is someone named Mark Finley who it would appear should be better versed in the King's English.
We call them a rip-off comapny because they are taking money under false pretenses. They are not registering anyone's copyright but they give the impression that they are. If you subscribe, you get to place a link on your web site that takes the visitor to a page like this sample page for Blackbird Creations. We checked with the US Copyright Office using the on-line search and the copyright claimed on this sample page does not appear as registered with the US Copyright Office.
Registering a copyright with the US Copyright Office is absolutely necessary before a copyright owner can take any federal court action against an alleged infringer. The Copyright Deposit web site serves absolutely no purpose except to document that some content was yours at some date in time. But, since your web site isn't registered with the US Copyright Office before the alleged infringment, if you can show infringement, you cannot get statuatory damages or legal fees. It requires six months to obtain a copyright certificate and then you still have to prove infringement.
Many people think everything they write, or say, or do, is protected by copyright. This is a false assumptiom. If what they have done shows some creativity and originality, then they may have copyright protection. But the word originality is important. It might be original to them but not to public domain. And then, they must show the alleged infringer copied them, not that the person "originated" it on their own.
So, from what we see, Copyright Deposit preys on unsuspecting people who believe they are getting copyright protection that will assure them of prevailing in any future copyright litigation. That's why the Copyright Deposit has been added to these pages. In our opinion, they are nothing more than scam artists.

Rebuttals
In an effort to provide a balanced view, we make the following offer to anyone who feels they have been wrongly accused on this web site.
If you, or your company, have been referenced on these pages, and you would like the chance to post a rebuttal, we will post your rebuttal (provided it is in good taste) so others can read it. The rebuttal must be submitted in a format that can easily be converted into HTML. We reserve the right to alter the rebuttal to make it more readable. However, we will not alter the content (unless there is offensive material to be removed). We also reserve the right to comment on any rebuttal received. Emails protesting the content of this web site may be treated as rebuttals by us at our discretion.