With the Anthropic lawsuit I wrote about in October (linked here), the topic of copyright registration has become a hot one. Unfortunately, the issue has led to various schemes that affect authors’ desire to obtain proper copyright registration.

Similar problems have surfaced regarding registration for the above-cited lawsuit.

On December 2, 2025, Jonathan Bailey wrote the following article, which was posted on”Plagiarism Today,” and I highly recommend that every writer read it.

How to Avoid Copyright Scams

by Jonathan Bailey
Blogger/Author – https://www.plagiarismtoday.com
Copyright & Plagiarism consultant/Expert Witness – CopyByte – https://copybyte.com
I am not a lawyer and nothing in this letter should be taken as legal advice. If you require legal advice, please seek out an attorney.

As many of you may know, in addition to running this site, I serve as a copyright consultant and expert witness at CopyByte. There, I offer services as an expert witness, serve as a DMCA agent for hundreds of sites, and file DMCA takedown notices to remove unlawful content.

Yesterday, I received an email at that domain informing me that a new Google account had added a copybyte.com email address as their recovery email address. That Gmail account was named “CopyByte Enforcement.”

There’s only one small problem. That account is in no way connected to me. The only reason that account exists is to impersonate me (and CopyByte) to scam users. I attempted to notify Google about this issue, but the company made it clear that “Gmail is unable to participate in mediations involving third parties regarding impersonation.”

I could, theoretically, contact Gmail’s generic abuse page. However, I have no evidence that the account has sent a single email. I can’t prove that it’s actively being used to deceive others. To make matters worse, I don’t have an email header, which is required to fill out the form.

However, I’m not alone in this. Nearly every major rightsholder and every copyright enforcement company, big and small, has been bitten by this kind of impersonation. This isn’t even the first time I’ve been impersonated. Scammers, hoping to make a quick buck, have jumped into this space because of the widespread confusion and fear that already exists.

While this problem isn’t unique to the copyright space, it has been ramping up significantly over the past few years. Fortunately, there are ways that you can mitigate this problem, but it’s important to start before you receive your first notice.

Laying the Groundwork

I first wrote about this topic in March 2021. In that article, I detailed what some of the more common scams are and how they work. It’s important to note that they come in a variety of forms, including direct payment scams, link spam scams and phishing emails.

However, avoiding all of them begins with understanding copyright and ensuring you aren’t infringing. Every one of these scams requires you to be less than sure of your own legality and preys on fears of infringement.

Being confident that your work is correctly used and licensed means you know any copyright notice you receive is either a scam or an error.

To be clear, mistakes do happen, and legitimate rightsholders and enforcement agencies send notices in error. I’ve been sent at least three myself. However, there is simply no substitute for the confidence in knowing you are not infringing and that you don’t have to fear these notices, legitimate or not.

This will take extra work and will involve either creating your content yourself or obtaining it from reputable sources. However, these scams thrive on panic and fear, and if you eliminate that fear, the scams can’t get a beachhead in your inbox.

If You Get a Notice

If you receive a notice, the first thing you should do is examine it closely. Read the notice carefully, understand what it is alleging, and what action it wants from you. However, pay special attention to the email address that it comes from.

No legitimate rightsholder, law firm, or enforcement agency sends email from a free domain such as gmail.com or proton.me, yahoo.com, etc.

But even if the email does come from a real domain, it is vital to check that as well. Scammers will create fake domains. This will include typo domains, such as dlsney.com (L instead of I), and enforcement-sounding domains, such as disney-copyright-enforcement.com. Either way, these are not likely to be legitimate domains.

If you are still unsure, search for the letter itself. Scams are bulk operations, and you are unlikely to be the first to have received a letter. A simple search for a passage from the letter may reveal countless other people talking about it as a scam. However, you do need to be careful here as some scammers do copy the format from legitimate notices.

Also, be very wary of any such emails that have a very tight deadline, especially if they are demanding money. If they demand action within a few hours or days, it’s a clear warning sign of a scam.

If none of this has given you a definitive answer, the best thing to do is to reach out (or ideally have your lawyer reach out) directly to the entity making the claim. Simply search their name and find their contact information on their site. Do not rely on information in the email.

Contact them directly, saying you wish to verify the validity of this email and claim, and forward the email to them if you can. Unless you are certain the email is authentic, do not click links inside it, as fake copyright claims are a common vector for phishing and malware attacks.

Bottom Line

To be clear, this is not an issue unique to copyright. Scammers inevitably insert themselves into any space where there’s an opportunity to exploit people’s fear and confusion.

Unfortunately, combating this requires individuals to become more aware of how copyright works and what they can do to avoid infringement. That’s a tall order that simply isn’t practical.

Instead, the best we can likely hope for is to encourage people to validate these notices before paying for them or clicking links. A few moments to validate a notice can save a great deal of headache down the road.

Still, after this most recent impersonation attempt, there also seems to be a lack of will from companies like Google to fight these issues. This should be a straightforward thing for me to report.

While I would certainly benefit from this account being shut down, the biggest winner would be the people that it attempts to scam. While I’m sure Google has reasons for this policy, it also enables scammers to thrive.

As long as impersonation is tolerated, scams will thrive. That’s true not just with copyright, but the internet in general.

Used with permission from the author.