Everyone loves a good story. This is the stuff of which urban legends are made. The couple fires up the automobile and screams off into the night, and later finds the dismembered hook hanging from the back door handle. This is great entertainment.
Entertainment is the key word, here.
It always amazes me that people who simply hear a rumor from another person can blindly believe the information to be true, especially when it comes to legal advice. The following is a prime example. One can obtain copyright protection by simply taking one's work, placing it into an envelope, and mailing the envelope to oneself. Of course not. Well, the only immediate benefit is that you have an official date, the postmark, by which the work must have been completed.