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Types of People That Use Bitmunk
There are three distinct types of people on Bitmunk. These are buyers, sellers and content-owners. A content owner is somebody that creates or owns the copyright to digital content. A buyer is somebody that wants to purchase digital content. A seller is somebody that is providing digital content on behalf of a content owner. These three types of people, coupled with Bitmunk's Sales Verification Authority, is what makes Bitmunk work.
Content Owners
A content-owner is a person or group of people that owns digital-content. This can be a musician, writer, band, book publisher, music label, professor, researcher, and anybody else that owns the rights to digital content. On Bitmunk, the content owner is typically the person that get the majority of the payment for digital content. More information on how Bitmunk works for content owners can be found in our Content Creator and Owner FAQ.
Buyer
A buyer is anybody that wants to purchase digital content on Bitmunk. The types of digital content on Bitmunk vary greatly - from music, movies, and television, to electronic books, 3D computer models, and high-definition pictures. To purchase an item on Bitmunk, a buyer typically uses bitmunk-personal-edition or webbuy to retrieve the digital content. More information on how Bitmunk works for Buyers can be found in our buyer-faq.
Seller
A seller is anybody that is providing digital content for sale on Bitmunk. Anybody can become a seller on Bitmunk, even you. To become a seller on Bitmunk, you can use the Bitmunk Personal Edition software to re-sell digital content that you have purchased via the Bitmunk, or have otherwise legally acquired. More information on how Bitmunk works for sellers can be found in our seller-faq.
Sales Verification Authority
The Sales Verification Authority (also known as the SVA) is a service that is run by Bitmunk to ensure that everybody using Bitmunk is protected during the entire purchase and sale process. The system uses many highly-secure, highly-available transaction processing technologies to ensure that you always get what you want on Bitmunk.
Bitmunk Transaction Process
The Bitmunk transaction process is a safe, secure way of purchasing and selling digitial content on the Internet. A basic transaction on Bitmunk involves four mostly-automated steps that are performed for buyers and sellers. These steps include:
- Contacting the seller
- Negotiating the contract
- Transferring the files
- Authorizing payment and decryption
Contacting the Seller
To purchase digital content on Bitmunk, a buyer finds what they want either through the Bitmunk website, the bitmunk-personal-edition software, or a Bitmunk-aware website, blog, news site, or RSS feed. Typically, all that is required to contact the seller is for the buyer to click on a purchase link on the sellers website.
Contract Negotiation
Once a buyer agrees to buy digital content at a certain price, a transaction contract is automatically created between the buyer and the seller. This ensures that the buyer gets what they want and the seller, artist, and publisher is paid. The contract is uploaded to the Sales Verification Authority and the download begins.
File Transfer
Since a buyer and seller on Bitmunk don't necessarily know each other, the files that the buyer wants are placed in a digitally locked box by the seller and sent to the buyer. In return, the buyer will not authorize payment until all the digital content has been sent by the seller.
Payment Authorization and Decryption
After all of the locked files have been sent to the buyer, the buyer will notify the Sales Verification Authority that they received all of the locked files and that they want to authorize payment to the seller in return for the keys to unlock the digital content.
The Sales Verification Authority then transfers the appropriate amount of money from the buyer to the seller and to the artist and sends the buyer the key to unlock and enjoy their digital content. The end result is a safe and secure transaction between a group of people that never had to meet in real life, nor know each other's identity.
This page was last modified on 23 June 2009, at 00:20. This page has been accessed 625 times.