Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright
"In all countries that are members of the Berne Convention, copyright is automatic and need not be obtained through official registration with any government office. Once an idea has been reduced to tangible form, for example by securing it in a fixed medium (such as a drawing, sheet music, photograph, a videotape, or a computer file), the copyright holder is entitled to enforce his or her exclusive rights. However, while registration isn't needed to exercise copyright, in jurisdictions where the laws provide for registration, it serves as prima facie evidence of a valid copyright."
A lack of publication or registration is only a problem if you're challenging the legitimacy someone else's copyright. And yes, that's considerably harder to do - as well it should be.
Does this mean that it's easy to register the copyright for unregistered work that isn't yours? Yes it does. But actually doing so is insanely stupid, since getting caught means opening yourself up to both a civil lawsuit from the rightful owner, as well as Federal perjury charges. And since you're involving the courts themselves in your fraud, you can expect whichever judge you face to be especially unforgiving.
Unsurprisingly, knowingly falsified copyright registration is not a widespread problem.
On the other hand, I doubt that the downvotes represent the opinions of a huge number of users (as it doesn't show lower than -4). If enough people agree with you, then they'll upvote it to +1 (I would say that it belongs at 0, but that's just me).