There’s an organization called the U.S. Copyright Registry (USCR) that is sending out unsolicited commercial e-mails (spam) that looks like the messages come from the U.S. federal government. The e-mails contain repeated references to copyright law and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (which handles patents and trademarks but not copyrights).

It appears that USCR has harvested contact information for domain name registrants from the WHOIS registry. The information is plugged into the official-looking notice to add credibility to the sales pitch.

I have nothing against a company earning a buck or even clever copywriting. However, I do object to spam, particularly when it is designed to fool Internet business owners into thinking they should pay money to this company as part of complying with U.S. law as the company goes out of its way to make itself look like a government agency in its sales pitch.

Here’s a sample e-mail from USCR. Read it for yourself and warn others.

For information on how to protect your website’s content using U.S. copyright law, consult with your Internet lawyer to address specific legal issues. If you want to do-it-yourself, go to the U.S. Copyright Office’s website and learn more.

About the Author

With an advanced international law degree from Georgetown University and more than 13 years of real world legal experience, Attorney Mike Young shows entrepreneurs how to protect and grow their businesses online. He's the author of Internet Marketing Legal Secrets Revealed. Not just a lawyer who focuses exclusively on Internet and marketing law, Mike’s been working with computers for more than 27 years (his first computer was an Atari 400 with 8 KiB RAM) and started representing Internet businesses back in 1996.