MEDIA is a platform that allows the commercialization and dissemination of electronic documents under similar conditions as printed documents using an agent-based, distributed and secure platform. Documents in the MEDIA system are encapsulated within agents which the reader must execute in order to access their contents. The developed pilot application of MEDIA is HyperNews, a commercial electronic newspaper environment allowing its readers to buy articles from different information providers (electronic newspaper publishers) and compose their own personalized newspaper.