US Copyright Group Caught Red Handed Copying Competitor’s Website

Why is it that the biggest “defenders” of copyright are always the ones caught infringing on others’ copyrights? As a whole bunch of you have been submitting, US Copyright Group — the publicity seeking effort from DC law firm Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver that is suing tens of thousands of people for alleged copyright infringement in an effort to get them to pay up via “pre-settlement” letters — appears to have a bit of a problem with understanding copyright itself. TorrentFreak is showing how USCG appears to have blatantly copied the full HTML for its “settlements” website from a competing operation called Copyright Enforcement Group. USCG had set up a site at CopyrightSettlement.info that had code that was so obviously copied from CEG that it included CEG’s copyright statement, images and phone number for some of the time. Since then, much of the code has been “scrubbed,” but plenty of CEG’s code was still there. Here’s the image TorrentFreak put together noting the… uh… obvious similarities (you can click for a larger view):




And it’s not a case of the two operations being related or sharing information. TorrentFreak contacted CEG about this, and was told:


“Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We are not associated with the US Copyright Group and they are not authorized to use Copyright Enforcement Group materials.”

Someone else was told that Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver will be receiving a cease & desist shortly. I wonder what sort of “pre-settlement” option will come with that letter.

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