Have the copyright enforcers been caught with their hands in the cookie jar? The blog TorrentFreak today published its claim that the US Copyright Group, which has filed more than 14,000 lawsuits against anonymous P2P movie sharers, ripped off another copyright settlement group in crafting its own settlement website.

The site was tipped off by a reader, who claimed that US Copyright Group had jacked code and visual elements from Copyright Settlements, which is in a similar business: sue P2P users, then send them letters demanding a settlement to avoid trial.

The sweet smell of hypocrisy!

Or was it? We checked in with Tom Dunlap, a partner at the law firm of Dunlap, Grubb, & Weaver and the force behind US Copyright Group. He claimed to be the victim of a hit job, and he notes that the existing version of his law firm’s site bears little resemblance to the TorrentFreak picture.

“We have a company that designed the website for us (in New York),” he told Ars. “Our site does not look like or have anything to do with the other site (please look at the two sitesand not what is in the articlewhich does not make sense to me). We never had a live site like the one pictured in the article. I think this is a baseless attack to generate some negative comments. I suppose it was successful, but it is entirely not truthful to my knowledge. All we can do is modify the text though an interface in a program called Salesforce, we can’t even put the pictures and such on the site ourselves.”

But TorrentFreak stands by its story. Site founder Ernesto told Ars that he personally saw the USCG site when it resembled the Copyright Settlements site, but he does admit that the site may not have been “live” at the time. “It was not linked on any of their sites, so ‘not in use’ would be a better way to describe it,” he said.

TorrentFreak’s story must have had some accuracy to it, as the USCG site even today continued to use elements from the competing site. In the course of watching it over the afternoon, we saw one image (a stylized “sign in” box) replaced with the word “placeholder.” Then, a bit later, this was replaced in turn with the words “Please Login.” A striped background box apparently cribbed from Copyright Settlements’ site (it even had the same filename) was also scrubbed.

By late in the day, the orange arrow had gone, replaced with a blue one. And the logos for credit cards were replaced with the words, “All Major Credit Cards Accepted.”

It’s difficult to know what, if anything, to make of this. One can imagine easily enough that the web designers did indeed begin with the Copyright Settlements site as a structural model and simply forget to remove a couple of small design elements before the site went live.

If true, one expects that USCG lawyers will offer the same level of understanding to those defendants who offer their own responses about a total lack of knowledge of any nefarious behaviornumerous handwritten examples of which have already been sent to the DC court where these cases are being considered.

Let’s talk “copyright”

The story took an even more bizarre turn when a source who has previously contacted Ars about Dunlap, Grubb, & Weaver wrote in to alert us to something else: the law firm’s own page on “copyright” contains text identical to that found on a much larger legal practice’s own website.

Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver notes that “Copyright is a form of legal protection for written works including computer software, music and recordings, dramatic works, choreographic works, photographs, paintings, graphics, sculptures, audio video works, and architectural works. Generally any creative work that can be seen, heard or touched (either directly or with the aid of a machine) is protected by copyright laws. As such Copyright can provide significant protection for a broad range of intellectual property. However, securing all of the benefits of copyright protection can be tricky and failure to take certain prescribed action can result in loss of rights.”

Good stuff, huh?

The law firm of Jaeckle, Fleischmann & Mugel, which appears to employ far more attorneys than Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver, certainly thinks so. Its own definition is identical.

A second paragraph appears to be identical in its entirety, as well.

We’re not clear where this text came from, who may have copied from whom, or if the entire thing is (legally) cribbed from a trade group or public domain source. But we do know that Google can only find two instances of this paragraph on the entire Internet: one at each law firm.

We followed up with Tom Dunlap, who merely told us that “copyright is defined by the US Code.”