Modelling the General Data Protection Regulation

The new EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will soon replace the older data protection directive. Currently, the knowledge to comply with the regulation is only available in a human-readable format. If this knowledge is translated into machine-readable rules then computer based systems can ease data protection information retrieval as well as the process of checking GDPR compliance. In this paper, we model the obligations defined in the GDPR and then translate the model into a machine readable format by extending the Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL) ontology. The model is, in turn, used for a compliance checking tool

ECLAP 2012 Conference on Information Technologies for Performing Arts, Media Access and Entertainment

It has been a long history of Information Technology innovations within the Cultural Heritage areas. The Performing arts has also been enforced with a number of new innovations which unveil a range of synergies and possibilities. Most of the technologies and innovations produced for digital libraries, media entertainment and education can be exploited in the field of performing arts, with adaptation and repurposing. Performing arts offer many interesting challenges and opportunities for research and innovations and exploitation of cutting edge research results from interdisciplinary areas. For these reasons, the ECLAP 2012 can be regarded as a continuation of past conferences such as AXMEDIS and WEDELMUSIC (both pressed by IEEE and FUP). ECLAP is an European Commission project to create a social network and media access service for performing arts institutions in Europe, to create the e-library of performing arts, exploiting innovative solutions coming from the ICT

Contribution à la modélisation des données spatio-temporelles

Rapport de recherche en modelistion spatio-temporelle impliquant divers technologies incluant les bases de données spatiales, les systèmes d'information géographiques participatifs, le web sémantique, les ontologies spatiales, la knowledge discovery et les réseaux des capteurs sans fils

First International Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL) Workshop

peer-reviewedSoftware license management is currently expanding from its traditional desktop environment into the mobile application space, but software vendors are still applying old licensing models to a platform where application rights will be specified, managed and distributed in new and different ways. This paper presents an open-source pervasive application rights management architecture (PARMA) for fixed network and mobile applications that supports the specification of application rights in a rights expression language (REL) based on ODRL. Our rights specification model uses aspectoriented programming to generate modularized rights enforcement behaviour, which reduces development time for rights models such as feature-based usage rights and nagware. PARMA manages vendor and customer application rights over multiple platforms using a web services architecture and a container model on the client-side. The container model also supports the integration of services such as payment and encourages the super distribution of the rights object with associated default (evaluation) rights

Pervasive Application Rights Management Architecture

This dissertation describes an application rights management architecture that combines license management with digital rights management to provide an integrated platform for the specification, generation, delivery and management of application usage rights for pervasive computing environments. A new rights expression language is developed, extended from the existing language, ODRL, which allows the expression of mobile application usage rights and supports fine-grained usage models. An audit-based usage rights model is introduced to support application usage without requiring immediate network availability. Rights are designed to be enforced on the device itself, without the need for communication with a server for every validation, realising the goal of reduced wide-area communications by mobile devices. The addition of the rights enforcement source code to the original application is facilitated using aspect-oriented programming and is performed at the license management server rather than by the developer. Back-end license management services, hosted by the application vendor, and/or enterprise customer, are based on web services so they can deliver applications and licenses to any client device that supports SOAP and/or HTTP(S) protocols and provide an integrated platform for management of licenses on both desktop and mobile devices. The thesis was motivated by the lack of suitable usage right management systems for the emerging pervasive environments. Pervasive computing devices include handheld computers, personal digital assistants, mobile phones, pagers, and others, and are generally characterised by mobility, occasional network connectivity, constrained resources, and, in the case of mobile phones, unique hardware identification by an IMEI number. Communication via wide-area network is available in the mobile environment but is still costly when compared to fixed networks. However, mobile devices can communicate using a variety of free short-range protocols, such as Bluetooth, Infrared, and 802.11. Software applications running on pervasive computing devices are generally licensed using software License Management Systems (LMS), distributed software architectures that manage software licenses throughout their life-cycle, or Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems, systems that specify and enforce usage rights on copyrighted information. Both these types of systems are originally developed for desktop devices in the fixed network environment. Existing LMS assume constant network connectivity present in LANs and require network connections for license validation and enforcement. This assumption can not be made in pervasive environments because network connectivity is only occasional and often costly.Existing LMS assume constant network connectivity present in LANs and require network connections for license validation and enforcement. This assumption can not be made in pervasive environments because network connectivity is only occasional and often costly. Existing LMS also require the addition of calls to a licensing API in the licensed application?s source code. This increases the application development time, as it is performed by the application developer, and it requires knowledge of licensing APIs. DRM systems that are used to manage usage rights on applications do not require a network connection or knowledge of proprietary APIs, however they are primarily designed for management of usage rights on content. As DRM systems treat applications and content in the same manner, they fail to support fine-grained usage models for applications. License validation and enforcement for an application is performed only once, on application loading, but license enforcement needs to be performed throughout the application execution to support flexible usage models such as feature-based, audit-based, and metered usage models. A pervasive license management system should overcome the limitations of the existing DRM and desktop LMS when deployed in pervasive computing environments. It should minimize the amount of wide area network traffic to reduce overhead costs introduced by the licensing system. It also requires usage rights models that do not make the assumption of an immediate network connection, to account for the occasional connectivity of mobile devices. A variety of application usage models should be supported so users can choose the best value model. Also, this system should provide a central point for managing all of the licensed software to support enterprise customers, whether it runs on mobile or desktop devices, and integrate easily within other enterprise services, such as payment or asset management. The architecture described in the thesis is designed to meet all of these requirements. This thesis is a part of the PARMA project that provides a full usage rights architecture. A rights expression language, usage rights servers and a means of integration of usage rights in applications are provided in this thesis, while a client usage right enforcement architecture is provided by the remaining parts of the project

Digital Rights Enforcement for Pervasive Computing Applications

Increasingly, application software is expanding from the desktop into mobile application environments, such as handset devices and embedded systems which are more limited in resources and volatile in their network connectivity. An integrated architecture that can protect intellectual property for both types of environments should offer the promise of reduced software maintenance costs. Software licensing is an existing mechanism by which specific license agreements are enforced between a software provider and the users of the software. Usually, the license terms are activated by a unique activation code delivered to the user. Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a more recent development that covers the description, identification, trading, protection, monitoring, and tracking of all forms of rights usage over both tangible and intangible assets. This includes the management of Rights Holder relationships with the help of special purpose rights expression languages (REL). Both, software licensing and DRM approaches have failed to address the new challenges posed by protecting intellectual property for mobile application software. This thesis, therefore, proposes a solution to merge the best of both approaches for the special case of application software rights enforcement. It is targeted to mobile computing platforms to meet the challenges in that area. Existing distributed software licensing systems were originally designed for fixed network applications and typically assume the immediate availability of a network connection to verify and validate rights with a rights server. Yet, this approach is not feasible for mobile environments, because of occasional connected network characteristics. Moreover, software licensing systems do not implement an existing standard for the description of license terms which cause interoperability issues with asset management software. The focus of the DRM community to date has been on rights management for media content, which has left many issues unresolved for the specific case of rights management for application software.The difficulties of developing an all-encompassing DRM solution for the media industry has left standards based work on the enforcement of rights for application software under-specified. This is mainly because the media industry requires a broad consensus of hardware and software manufacturers to implement an agreed standard, whereas application software does not require runtime support of the underlying hardware or any third party applications. The existing rights expression languages supported by DRM systems lack the support for the explicit specification of application-level features. Existing usage-based restrictions on digital work usually include display, print, play, and execute permissions. Also, the assumption of immediate or constant network connectivity to a rights management server cannot be made for the validation and enforcement of rights on a pervasive computing platform, because factors such as network unavailability have to be anticipated. Therefore, the introduction of more flexible rights models for occasionally connected mobile environments is required. This is achieved through the specification and implementation of novel rights models, such as audit-based and feature-based models. The introduction of these flexible rights models poses new challenges to designing an enforcement architecture for pervasive environments. The enforcement architecture has to deal with resource constraints on mobile devices, such as limited memory and processor power, while at the same time provide an extensible set of APIs so that it can be adapted for different computing platforms. This thesis proposes a solution to enforce and deliver application software rights implemented in a generic enforcement framework, based on an extended version of the Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL), called PARMA REL, that accounts for the characteristics of applications in pervasive environments. In particular, the architecture supports the enforcement of audit-based and feature-based rights models. While the architecture in this thesis has specific support for mobile environments, it has also been designed to operate in a fixed network environment. A further contribution of this thesis is to present a pervasive application rights enforcement framework which does not make any assumptions on the target platform by basing the design on the dependency inversion and Hollywood principles. The architecture is designed in a way that decouples functional and rights enforcement logic. It supports the association of rights with application-level features by leveraging aspect-oriented software engineering techniques to weave the enforcement as an orthogonal service into any existing J2ME, J2SE, or J2EE application. This makes it possible to restrict access to certain modules at runtime. Developer support is provided by tools to generate aspects based on the rights description and the target platform. Furthermore, a MDA-oriented development process is introduced to cover the generation and weaving of rights into the application in a non-intrusive manner. Consequently, the rights models designed for pervasive computing environments combined with the flexible enforcement architecture enable the enforcement of rights of applications in new, sophisticated and standard-compliant ways. The enforcement architecture is evaluated with respect to the ability to adapt to different platforms, to operate in resource-constrained environments, and to guard against potential attacks. Also the execution and runtime overhead of the enforcement logic is evaluated and the architecture is compared with existing enforcement architectures. The enforcement architecture is implemented for two platforms, J2ME and J2SE