PaySwarm Introductory Video

The Goal of PaySwarm

"The PaySwarm web platform is an open standard that enables web browsers and web devices to acquire licenses, distribute micropayments and perform copyright-aware digital media distribution."

• The patent and royalty-free standard would be implemented in all major web browsers.
• PaySwarm would turn 1.7 billion web browsers into a point-of-sale for digital content (images, music, video, and data).
• Content owners would retain all rights and can set royalties and prices at will.
• Sounds great, but how do we accomplish this?

The World Wide Web Consortium

"Led by the inventor of the Web, Tim Berners-Lee, W3C's mission is to lead the Web to its full potential."

• W3C is responsible for key technologies implemented in every web browser in the world.
• A few examples: The HyperText Markup Language (HTML), Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), Really Simple Syndication (RSS), and the eXtensible Markup Language (XML)
• There is interest at W3C for the PaySwarm work, but standardization doesn't begin until we can demonstrate industry support and guidance.

The PaySwarm Technology

"Digital Bazaar created the first reference implementation of a PaySwarm network in 2007. The network has been operating live for over 3 years. The technology is scalable and solid."

• The first PaySwarm network was Bitmunk - over 1 million songs for sale, >38000 artists under management.
• The reference implementation source code is available under an open source license.
• The technology works; the W3C is ready to start standardization. We need the content creators to give us the signal to start as well as help guide the standard.

Learn More about PaySwarm

• Learn about Website-based PaySwarm.
  • A simple way to use PaySwarm, built on top of OAuth.
• Learn about Browser-based PaySwarm
  • A future-looking solution for natively buying and re-distributing digital content from within the Web browser.