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ANNO 2003: LEGAL PEER-TO-PEER SOLUTION WILL IGNITE WEB BOOM

Anybody can sell their own digital content -- such as music, movies, software or electronic books -- legally and profitably with Payshare, a new digital distribution service that legitimizes peer-to-peer.

Payshare, developed and patented by software house ANNO 2003, will revolutionize the way digital content is distributed. "Payshare combines the anarchy and community of peer-to-peer file sharing with the rights-to-profit and free market ideals of capitalism," said Norbert Boehnke, sales director of ANNO 2003.

The Payshare distribution model allows anyone to profit by copying and promoting digital goods, and gives original content owners a far higher profit margin than traditional distribution models.

Payshare Model

Original content owners register their digital content with Payshare and make the product available online.

Purchasers buy the product and have the option to register with Payshare as a "co-publisher."

Co-publishers distribute the content (through, for example, a Web site, or a peer-to-peer network) and receive a percentage of the retail price. The percentage a co-publisher receives is set by the original content owner.

"Payshare undermines traditional distribution models. Anyone -- from home movie makers to unsigned bands or established artists -- can sell their content digitally, at no risk of piracy and with a higher profit margin. Traditional music labels or movie distributors suddenly have little value to offer," said Boehnke.

First Product

The first product to be distributed using Payshare is ANNO 2X, video-compression software from ANNO 2003. ANNO 2X can squeeze four hours of DVD-movies into just 630MB at broadcast television standard.

"ANNO 2X is a tool for archiving DVDs to a hard disk drive. But, more important, it helps people sell their own movies online as it lets purchasers download, and resell, content faster. For that reason, and to demonstrate Payshare, we decided to make ANNO 2X the first product available through Payshare, said Boehnke.

"The Web gave everyone the right to publish," said Boehnke. "Payshare gives them the right to profit too."

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