Wgho's the real owner?

A company claims to be owner of a free content article

[Mauricio]

I received an email from a company that says:

a) we are the copyright owners of the article x
b) you can see the article in our website here
c) you have published the article in your website
d) we've notified to our attorney
e) we will also be following the DMCA procedures at all of the major search engines

Then I check the file and find that is published anywhere in the net as free reprintable content (I took it this way years ago) from someone who owns another website.
I wrote to the author (at least the first author I knew) and he replied "Ummmmm... that's strange. I will investigate".

Any thoughts?
It's free content becoming too risky?
It's time to abandon free content?
There are secure sources for free content?

Thanks in advance.

[BigDave]

My guess is that someone in their organisation put the free content on their website, and now someone else somehow thinks that it was produced there.

Point out to them that you got it from a source that claimed that it was made freely available, and that the purported author agrees.

Ask them to verify who within their organisation actually wrote the article and when.

Point out Title 17, chapter 5, section 506 makes it clear that if they are fraudulently claiming copyright of that article, that they are involved in CRIMINAL infringement.

Also state that if they are in fact the true and rightful copyright holder AND that it was never released under any license making it generally available, that you will willingly take it down and that you would be willing to testify against the primary infringer.

But if they are not the true and rightful copyright holder, you are collecting all their correspondance and would be willing to testify against them, AND you will file suit yourself.

<added>Oh yeah, and talk to an attorney, don't base your legal options on what is said on a message board</added>