Paul and Thomas Franklin, brothers, are college students and web designers. While at the University of Megalopolis, a private, for-profit college in the "Quad State" area, they started an online chat service called FaceLinked. Paul attended and resided at the college's campus in the State of Quadrahenria. Thomas, who was on probation during college for a low level felony drug conviction, could not be a resident student and took classes at the campus in the Commonwealth of New Guernsey campus. The chat service began by putting information from the school's student directory online, and offering blog, chat, and message board features. FaceLinked was such a hit that within a year, the school advised the brothers that they had to remove FaceLinked from the university's server as it was utilizing too many resources. This was not a problem as the Franklins found advertisers, so they were able to move FaceLinked to a private server without charging user fees. In fact, FaceLinked was earning so much revenue that the Franklin brothers were able to pay themselves and the six friends who helped them start and operate it salaries.
The Franklin brothers are graduating from the University of Megalopolis and will be attending separate graduate programs. Paul will attend Quadrahenria State University, and Thomas the College of New Guernsey. As FaceLinked is so successful, the brothers not only plan to expand it to the two new colleges that they are attending, but to as many other colleges within the four states comprising the "Quad State" area as possible. They even have hopes of "going national." As part of their plan to expand to other campuses, they expect to recruit a student from each of the new schools "to get them in." They wish to formalize FaceLinked by organizing it as a proper business. The brothers would like to maintain a majority interest in the business, give about 20 percent to the six friends from their undergraduate days who helped them run the service, and use the remaining interest in the business to attract other investors and use employee incentives.
They seek your advice on
(a) the form of business they should use,
(b) who might have a claim on the business, and
(c) how they might protect themselves from claims regarding a computerized internet platform?