Giacomo wrote: If you and John Doe are working on identical projects and try to file for a copyright at the same time, this will help to show who completed the work first.  Unless, of course, the instructor for the basic copywrite course I took a few years back was blowing smoke out his arse lol :)

Yes, I think he was. Do you have any example of where this has worked? It simply makes no sense: it obviously can't prove anything, nor establish a "datestamp". It is so easy to fake that I can't imagine a court (at least in the United States) taking it as an example of anything other than someone trying game the system.

If you'd like me to, I can use this method to show that I wrote Sorceror sometime before August 31, 1982. I wrote it at my parent's place in Michigan, and mailed it to my school address, because I knew it was a cool idea that tons of people would try to steal. I'm shocked, shocked! to discover that someone else has published it under their own name.

And I also predicted that you would write your post 24 years later, right down to the same fonts!

It's simple enough:

1) the post office does not require that your envelope be sealed, or even have anything in it.
2) even if an envelope is sealed it is easy enough to re-open it and re-seal it.

In my case I happen to have a manila envelope that my parents used to mail something to me; I've been re-using it ever since to hold a D&D adventure, but it's still intact and still has the "datestamp" of Aug 31 A.M. 1982. I could easily slip a rewrite of Sorceror into it, or a printout of your posting from 2006. What would it show? Nothing other than that I'm either a packrat or a well-prepared scammer.

Jerry