A system for coauthoring a document, the system comprising: a server including: one or more documents (200; 502), each document being organized into sections; a document permissions module that stores user access permissions for each section of a document, the user access permissions defining an extent to which a user can modify each section of the document, the document permissions module permitting different user access permissions to be stored for the sections of the document; a document update processing module that processes requests from a user to share document updates with other users and that processes requests from a user to receive document updates from other users; and a document rendering module that renders a document for display on a client (101, 102), the document being rendered so that sections of the document are updated with shared document updates made by users, the shared document updates being requested by the user on the client; wherein the system permits two or more users to coauthor one or more of the sections of the document so that each user has specific access rights to one or more of the sections of the document, so that the user can specify whether updates made by the user to the one or more sections of the document can be displayed to other users, and so that the user can view the names (312, 318) of other users accessing the one or more sections of the document and can selectively obtain updates to the document from those users. a server including: one or more documents (200; 502), each document being organized into sections; a document permissions module that stores user access permissions for each section of a document, the user access permissions defining an extent to which a user can modify each section of the document, the document permissions module permitting different user access permissions to be stored for the sections of the document; a document update processing module that processes requests from a user to share document updates with other users and that processes requests from a user to receive document updates from other users; and a document rendering module that renders a document for display on a client (101, 102), the document being rendered so that sections of the document are updated with shared document updates made by users, the shared document updates being requested by the user on the client; one or more documents (200; 502), each document being organized into sections; a document permissions module that stores user access permissions for each section of a document, the user access permissions defining an extent to which a user can modify each section of the document, the document permissions module permitting different user access permissions to be stored for the sections of the document; a document update processing module that processes requests from a user to share document updates with other users and that processes requests from a user to receive document updates from other users; and a document rendering module that renders a document for display on a client (101, 102), the document being rendered so that sections of the document are updated with shared document updates made by users, the shared document updates being requested by the user on the client; wherein the system permits two or more users to coauthor one or more of the sections of the document so that each user has specific access rights to one or more of the sections of the document, so that the user can specify whether updates made by the user to the one or more sections of the document can be displayed to other users, and so that the user can view the names (312, 318) of other users accessing the one or more sections of the document and can selectively obtain updates to the document from those users.