The Demand-Letter Guide

Independent — no ads, nothing sold, and every claim links to its primary source.

Verified as of What that means

How This Is Verified

Every load-bearing claim on these pages links to the primary source it rests on: the statute text, the court opinion, or the government record that actually says it. Nothing here rests on a byline, a credential, or a confident tone. The purpose of this page is to make that standard checkable, so any factual claim can be traced back to its source and confirmed independently.

Verified as of 2026-07-16. The sources, links, and tools described on this page were last checked on this date.

The Standard: Primary Sources, Linked at First Reference

A primary source is the original legal text, not a summary of it. Here that means three kinds of record:

  • Statute text. Copyright is federal law, codified in Title 17 of the U.S. Code. Every statutory claim (a size threshold, a damages range, an exemption condition) is checked against the codified text itself and linked at its first mention, most often to the Cornell Legal Information Institute or uscode.house.gov.
  • Court opinions. When a case is cited for what enforcement actually looks like, the claim is checked against the published opinion, not a press release or a secondary article describing it.
  • Government records. Consent-decree status and antitrust posture are checked against Department of Justice Antitrust Division records, not against a licensing organization’s own description of them.

Locked facts (the square-footage thresholds, the statutory dollar figures, the case outcomes) are verified against the source text, word for word, rather than against secondary coverage that often rounds, paraphrases, or garbles them. Where a figure cannot be confirmed against a primary source, it is not stated as established fact.

What “Verified as of” Means

Near the top of each load-bearing page, and on the enforcement-record data table, sits a dated stamp of the kind shown above. The stamp means the claims on that page were checked against their primary sources on that date. It reflects the law as best understood at that point. It is not a promise that the law has stayed still since.

This area of law does change, and some parts move faster than others. The statutory thresholds in Title 17 rarely shift. What shifts more often:

  • Consent-decree and antitrust posture for the licensing organizations.
  • Rate schedules and settlement terms, including time-limited ones that expire on a set date.
  • Case status. A cited opinion can be appealed, narrowed, or read differently by a later court even when the statute it interprets stays the same.

These volatile items are re-checked on a standing schedule, and the stamp is refreshed when they are. If you are reading a page well after its verified date, or your situation carries real exposure, treat the page as a starting map and confirm the current rule before acting.

What Verification Does Not Cover

A citation proves what the law says. It does not prove what the law means for one specific venue.

Verifying a claim confirms two things: that an authoritative source supports the general statement, and the date it was checked. It does not confirm the facts of any particular business, such as its exact square footage, its music source, whether it charges admission, or how it is owned. It also does not guarantee that a correctly stated general rule resolves a particular letter. A “Verified as of” stamp on a general legal statement is not a verified answer about a specific venue. Reading verified general law as a settled conclusion for a specific situation is the most common way an accurate page gets misused.

When to Stop and Get a Professional

Everything here is a general explanation of federal music-licensing law. It is not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. General explanation has a limit, and past that limit the honest answer is to get a licensed professional, even one these pages earn nothing from.

Treat these as signals to stop self-researching and consult an attorney:

  • A lawsuit has already been filed (a case or docket number appears on the letter, or a court notice has arrived).
  • A demand carries a short deadline and significant exposure, and the facts are genuinely uncertain.
  • The outcome turns on judgment about specific facts rather than on what the statute plainly says.

Sending a reader to counsel is a better outcome than being the reason a deadline was missed or a defense was waived.

How to Check Any Claim Yourself

The whole method reduces to one action anyone can take: follow the link.

On any load-bearing claim, open the primary source it links to and read the operative words. The same free tools used to verify these pages are open to everyone:

If a link is broken, or the source does not say what the page says, distrust the page, not the source. The source is the authority; the page is only a translation of it.

This site sells nothing and earns nothing from any recommendation; the full funding disclosure is on the page about how this site is funded. For the overview of what a licensing letter is and what to do first, start at the hub page.