From: http://forums.vindy.com/read.php?1,544671 (that MyWebs mentioned)
MyFreeCopyright.com Is Now An Official Scam
Posted by: HNNEWS (IP Logged)
Date: July 18, 2012 02:02PM
For Immediate Release from HudsonNet NewsWires Copyright July 18th, 2012 (Redistribution allowed with HNNEWS Attribution)
MyFreeCopyright.com Is Now An Official Scam
by Dirk Bannon
When Matthew Whittaker launched MyFreeCopyright.com in 2006, many people questioned whether the service was a scam. Legally, the service is not linked to any government copyright office. What it was designed to do was to prove that a person had created a specific work on a specific date and time, by digitally registering that work. Since there was nothing illegal about what the service was, and it did that service well, it became popular with thousands of bloggers, web site developers, artists and others creating intellectual property that they wanted proof of creation for.
Now, all that has changed. In May of this year, six years and one month after he created it, Matthew Whittaker sold the web site and it appears that it is now owned by one Regge Chan in Hong Kong. By June, people began to talk about the site being down and then once it was back up, complaints began to slowly trickle out that people had their accounts deleted. The first assumption was that their accounts had been hacked, however, one account holder, who has asked to remain anonymous, suspected that this wasn't the work of hackers. He began his own investigation and found that systematically, accounts were deleted, emails to the service were going unanswered and all the works associated with deleted accounts had been removed from the site - all without warning.
Then a tweet, that Twitter has stopped showing, confirmed his suspicions:
"Looks like myfreecopyright has wiped its accounts clean and started over..."
It seems like it all began with Corey who posted on June 19, at Yahoo Answers that he couldn't access MyFreeCopyright.com.
"Can anyone access this site? I keep coming up with ""Ruby (Rack) application could not be started'"
[answers.yahoo.com]
July 5 2012 Sybille Sterk reports on her blog [www.redbubble.com] that she can't log into her account and that one of her copyrights has been removed without permission. She asks on her blog "Anybody have the same problems? Please let me know."
LoreLeft27 responded with "hey guess what ive discovered they've removed all my works and a whole bunch of others"
Linda Lee chimed in with "Hi Sybille, have they responded to any of your emails yet? I tried unsuccessfully to sign into the site tonight."
July 9th, Brassy reports on JRobin Whitley's blog [www.redbubble.com]
"I copyrighted a lot of my writing with My Free Copyright. I tried to log in recently and they don’t recognise me. They say I’m not registered. I’m afraid all my writing has no copyright now. As a struggling writer I couldn’t afford to pay out loads for copyrighting. I don’t know what to do. They haven’t replied to my emails".
July 12 on twitter, KazeLoon tweets someone has "HACKED INTO MY ACCOUNT AT [www.myfreecopyright.com] AND DELETED ALL MY COPYRIGHT DATA"
On July 16th, WorldNet NewsWires, from their twitter handle @WNNWs, gets involved by warning people to check their accounts because they may be gone. Soon after, it became apparent that the first tweet was true - MyFreeCopyright had closed out all accounts from before June 2012.
It appears that Regge Chan is now soliciting for more works to be registered. What he intends to do with the information he gets is unknown. The fact, that he would delete the works and accounts of previous users of the site, shows that he cares not one whit about those who his site is supposed to serve. Furthermore, the fact that the site is now owned and run from a country with a reputation for rampant piracy and theft of intellectual property, means that anyone desiring to protect their works should avoid MyFreeCopyright.com like the plague.
At the time this piece was being edited, it was discovered that all pages for each work, that had been registered before the sale of MyFreeCopyright.com, are now being changed to go to the main web site page. Try this for example: myfreecopyright.com/registered_mcn/WAX9A-JD956-R5E57.
[www.myfreecopyright.com] . That URL used to go to the registration page for that artist's work and after the sale, that page said that the copyrighted work had been removed. Now it goes to the main web site instead. This indicates that there is a systematic effort on the part of Regge to wipe clean all references to the work ever having been registered with MyFreeCopyright.com.
Our anonymous source is determined to investigate Mr. Chan and expose what he is doing and why, and has sworn to do everything allowed by law (not just legal) to exact vengeance for what he feels has been a flagrant disregard for people who entrusted their hard work to the site that Chan purchased. This would include the destruction of the site's viability as a commercial concern by destroying its name and reputation, as well as that of Regge Chan. One way this could be done easily is if everyone who ever registered with MyFreeCopyright.com were to file a complaint at the Better Business Bureau. With thousands of potential victims, this would put MyFreecopyright and Regge Chan into the worse business category that the BBB has. This could hinder him from doing any other kind of business in the U.S.
Regge Chan is listed as having the email address of ass_ain98@hotmail.com. He is listed as both the administrative contact as well as the technical contact. He has the physical address of Floor 11 Flat A 19 Bonmah Road Hong Kong, with the telephone number of +852.853.28842971 and the Fax +852.6565321170. The domain servers are listed in order: NS1.P25.DYNECT.NET NS2.P25.DYNECT.NET. GoDaddy.com is the domain name registrar. [www.whois.com]
While Matthew Whittaker may not have created MyFreeCopyright.com as a scam, there is no doubt that now, that it is in the hands of Regge Chan, it has become a big one - with thousands of unwitting victims.
