Showing Movies at Your Bar, Gym, or Waiting Room: What a License Costs
Playing a DVD or Netflix for customers is a public performance: fines run $750–$150,000 per film, while an MPLC umbrella license costs about $1,000 a year.
#copyright
Copyright
Copyright ownership, registration, licensing, and infringement risk for the content, images, and code a small business publishes
Register Before You're Copied: The Three-Month Copyright Window That Decides Statutory Damages
Register within three months of first publication or lose statutory damages up to $150,000 per work and attorney's fees for any infringement that began earlier.
Comet Plus Pays Publishers 80% of AI Search Revenue: How to Book Your First Payout as Variable Royalty Income
Comet Plus pays publishers 80% of subscription revenue as usage-based royalties — book it when the statement settles, and expect IRS Schedule C, not Schedule E.
DMCA Designated Agent: The $6 Filing That Protects Any Site With User Content
Any business hosting user uploads, reviews, or listings loses DMCA safe harbor unless it designates an agent with the Copyright Office for $6, renews that designation every three years, and actually enforces a repeat-infringer policy. This guide covers registration, the six elements of a valid takedown notice, the 10-to-14-business-day putback window, and the records that prove compliance.
Who Owns the Work Your Contractor Created? A Startup Founder's Guide to IP Assignment
Paying a contractor does not transfer intellectual property. Under U.S. law the creator owns the copyright and the inventor owns the patent rights unless a signed writing says otherwise, and "work made for hire" language covers only nine narrow statutory categories that exclude custom software. This guide covers the seven clauses a contractor IP assignment needs, why "hereby assigns" beats "agrees to assign," and what investors check in diligence.
AI-Generated Content and Copyright in 2026: What Small Businesses Can Actually Own, Use, and Risk
After a $1.5 billion settlement and a Supreme Court decision reaffirming human authorship, 2026 rulings split AI training from AI output: training can be fair use, but storing pirated copies is not, and publishing outputs that reproduce protected work still risks infringement. This guide shows what small businesses can own, what they risk, and how to keep AI-assisted work defensible and auditable.
Can You Copyright That AI-Generated Blog Post? What Small Businesses Need to Know About Ownership and Infringement in 2026
U.S. copyright protects only human authorship, so raw AI output is unprotectable and unenforceable. The Copyright Office's January 2025 report found prompts alone do not make you the author — protection attaches only to the parts a reader can see you wrote. Here is what that means for small-business marketing content, plus the disclosure, licensing, and bookkeeping records that prove it.