The ontomedia project : ODR, relational justice, multimedia

More than ever, the Web is a space of social interaction. Recent trends reveal that Internet users spend more time interacting within online communities than in checking and replying to e-mail. Online communities and institutions create new spaces for interaction, but also open new avenues for the emergence of grievances, claims, and disputes. Consequently, online dispute resolution (ODR) procedures are core to these new online worlds. But can ODR mechanisms provide sufficient levels of reputation, trust ,and enforceability so as to become mainstream? This contribution introduces the new approaches to ODR with an emphasis on the Ontomedia Project, which is currently developing a web-based platform to facilitate online mediation in different domains

Relational justice: mediation and ODR through the World Wide Web

ODR means "Online Dispute Resolution". Dialogue, negotiation and mediation are coming back as sources of contemporary law. We introduce in this paper two concepts and two related projects. We define the concepts of "relational law" and "relational justice". And, at the same time, we describe how to put them in place from a social and technological point of view. Therefore, we introduce two concrete applications: (i) the Catalan White Book on Mediation, a large project to assemble the required social and legal knowledge to draft a general statute on mediation (Catalan Government); (ii) the Ontomedia Project, a semantically-driven platform allowing end-users to negotiate and mediate their conflicts in several domains (family, commerce, environment, health care, administration…). The paper describes the state of the art of ODR services, and proposes some strategies for legal electronic institutions. A middle-out theoretical approach and a mediation core-ontology are briefly described. We situate these two projects within the next generation of Semantic Web services, and the so-called Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 developments

Can Computers Be Fair? How Automated and Human-Powered Online Dispute Resolution Affect Procedural Justice in Mediation and Arbitration

Published in cooperation with the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolutio

Mediation, ODR, and the web 2.0: a case for relational justice

Dialogue, negotiation and mediation are renewed sources of contemporary law, and technology plays an active role in this process. User-centered strategies of the next Web generation are most suited to a relational justice model based on cooperative behavior, agreement, negotiation, and dialogue among both natural and artificial actors. In this paper we introduce Ontomedia, a project implementing the relational justice model by developing a web platform for online mediation. Ontomedia is designed as a semantically-driven web service that allows end-users to negotiate and mediate their conflicts in different domains (i.e. family and commerce). We situate this project within the next generation of Semantic Web services, and the so-called Web 2.0 (and Web 3.0) developments

Dispute Resolution for Cloud Services: Access to Justice and Fairness in Cloud-Based Low-Value Online Services

The traditional concepts of practicing the law do not follow the pace of the development of the new technologies. Faced with inefficiency and ineffectiveness of the courts regulators are constantly looking into alternatives to increase access to justice and improve efficiency of the dispute resolution mechanisms. The EU has recently enacted ADR and ODR regulations for consumer cross-border disputes. At the same time, we have witnessed parallel attempts from several public bodies and international organisations to introduce the legal framework for the resolution disputes coming out of online transactions. These proposals are in principle focusing on e-commerce aspects of dealing with low-cost consumer/seller disputes. The development of cloud computing services, as a form of e-commerce last decade, raised new issues of applicable law, jurisdiction, access to justice, the legal nature of the disputes, consumer protection etc. To obtain cloud computing services users generally accept a predefined contract of adhesion, where the terms should be accepted on “as is” basis. Non-negotiable predefined terms often tend to be in favor of providers. This research answers do the currently available dispute resolution mechanisms provide adequate means to resolve cross-border low-value disputes between cloud providers and users, and if not, what legal measures can be taken to improve access to justice and fairness in this domain

Crowdsourced online dispute resolution

Solving disputes often takes a considerable amount of time and money. That holds for everyone involved. A new type of dispute resolution called Crowdsourced Online Dispute Resolution (CODR) seems to have the potential to offer a cheap, fast, and democratic dispute resolution procedure. Since it is currently not clear whether CODR procedures comply with the requirements of procedural fairness, the attractiveness and the acceptance of CODR procedures may be in discussion. This thesis aims to establish whether CODR can fairly resolve disputes. First, it provides a framework of CODR, analyses the differences between CODR and other dispute resolution schemes, and constructs interpretation of procedural fairness that merges objective and subjective procedural fairness. Second, the research investigates whether the current CODR procedures are fair and proposes a model of a CODR procedure that complies with the interpretation of procedural fairness. The findings of the research indicate that CODR can be designed to fairly resolve disputes.Exploring the Frontiers of International La