Autonomy, Efficiency, Privacy and Traceability in Blockchain-enabled IoT Data Marketplace

Personal data generated from IoT devices is a new economic asset that individuals can trade to generate revenue on the emerging data marketplaces. Blockchain technology can disrupt the data marketplace and make trading more democratic, trustworthy, transparent and secure. Nevertheless, the adoption of blockchain to create an IoT data marketplace requires consideration of autonomy and efficiency, privacy, and traceability. Conventional centralized approaches are built around a trusted third party that conducts and controls all management operations such as managing contracts, pricing, billing, reputation mechanisms etc, raising concern that providers lose control over their data. To tackle this issue, an efficient, autonomous and fully-functional marketplace system is needed, with no trusted third party involved in operational tasks. Moreover, an inefficient allocation of buyers’ demands on battery-operated IoT devices poses a challenge for providers to serve multiple buyers’ demands simultaneously in real-time without disrupting their SLAs (service level agreements). Furthermore, a poor privacy decision to make personal data accessible to unknown or arbitrary buyers may have adverse consequences and privacy violations for providers. Lastly, a buyer could buy data from one marketplace and without the knowledge of the provider, resell bought data to users registered in other marketplaces. This may either lead to monetary loss or privacy violation for the provider. To address such issues, a data ownership traceability mechanism is essential that can track the change in ownership of data due to its trading within and across marketplace systems. However, data ownership traceability is hard because of ownership ambiguity, undisclosed reselling, and dispersal of ownership across multiple marketplaces. This thesis makes the following novel contributions. First, we propose an autonomous and efficient IoT data marketplace, MartChain, offering key mechanisms for a marketplace leveraging smart contracts to record agreement details, participant ratings, and data prices in blockchain without involving any mediator. Second, MartChain is underpinned by an Energy-aware Demand Selection and Allocation (EDSA) mechanism for optimally selecting and allocating buyers' demands on provider’s IoT devices while satisfying the battery, quality and allocation constraints. EDSA maximizes the revenue of the provider while meeting the buyers’ requirements and ensuring the completion of the selected demands without any interruptions. The proof-of-concept implementation on the Ethereum blockchain shows that our approach is viable and benefits the provider and buyer by creating an autonomous and efficient real-time data trading model. Next, we propose KYBChain, a Know-Your-Buyer in the privacy-aware decentralized IoT data marketplace that performs a multi-faceted assessment of various characteristics of buyers and evaluates their privacy rating. Privacy rating empowers providers to make privacy-aware informed decisions about data sharing. Quantitative analysis to evaluate the utility of privacy rating demonstrates that the use of privacy rating by the providers results in a decrease of data leakage risk and generated revenue, correlating with the classical risk-utility trade-off. Evaluation results of KYBChain on Ethereum reveal that the overheads in terms of gas consumption, throughput and latency introduced by our privacy rating mechanism compared to a marketplace that does not incorporate a privacy rating system are insignificant relative to its privacy gains. Finally, we propose TrailChain which generates a trusted trade trail for tracking the data ownership spanning multiple decentralized marketplaces. Our solution includes mechanisms for detecting any unauthorized data reselling to prevent privacy violations and a fair resell payment sharing scheme to distribute payment among data owners for authorized reselling. We performed qualitative and quantitative evaluations to demonstrate the effectiveness of TrailChain in tracking data ownership using four private Ethereum networks. Qualitative security analysis demonstrates that TrailChain is resilient against several malicious activities and security attacks. Simulations show that our method detects undisclosed reselling within the same marketplace and across different marketplaces. Besides, it also identifies whether the provider has authorized the reselling and fairly distributes the revenue among the data owners at marginal overhead

Free Culture and the Digital Library Symposium Proceedings 2005: Proceedings of a Symposium held on October 14, 2005 at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia.

Outlines the themes and contributions of the Free Culture and the Digital Library Symposium.The article provides a summary of the conflict of interests between those who seek to preserve ashared commons of information for society and those who seek to commodify information. Iintroduce a theoretical framework called Transmediation to help explain the changes in mediathat society is currently experiencing

A Proposal for the Protection of Digital Databases in Sri Lanka

Economic development in Sri Lanka has relied heavily on foreign and domestic investment. Digital databases are a new and attractive area for this investment. This thesis argues that investment needs protection and this is crucial to attract future investment. The thesis therefore proposes a digital database protection mechanism with a view to attracting investment in digital databases to Sri Lanka. The research examines various existing protection measures whilst mainly focusing on the sui generis right protection which confirms the protection of qualitative and/or quantitative substantial investment in the obtaining, verification or presentation of the contents of digital databases. In digital databases, this process is carried out by computer programs which establish meaningful and useful data patterns through their data mining process, and subsequently use those patterns in Knowledge Discovery within database processes. Those processes enhance the value and/or usefulness of the data/information. Computer programs need to be protected, as this thesis proposes, by virtue of patent protection because the process carried out by computer programs is that of a technical process - an area for which patents are particularly suitable for the purpose of protecting. All intellectual property concepts under the existing mechanisms address the issue of investment in databases in different ways. These include Copyright, Contract, Unfair Competition law and Misappropriation and Sui generis right protection. Since the primary objective of the thesis is to introduce a protection system for encouraging qualitative and quantitative investment in digital databases in Sri Lanka, this thesis suggests a set of mechanisms and rights which comprises of existing intellectual protection mechanisms for databases. The ultimate goal of the proposed protection mechanisms and rights is to improve the laws pertaining to the protection of digital databases in Sri Lanka in order to attract investment, to protect the rights and duties of the digital database users and owners/authors and, eventually, to bring positive economic effects to the country. Since digital database protection is a new concept in the Sri Lankan legal context, this research will provide guidelines for policy-makers, judges and lawyers in Sri Lanka and throughout the South Asian region

Free Culture and the Digital Library Symposium Proceedings 2005

This book of proceedings includes seventeen papers from a symposium held at Emory University. The symposium papers discuss subjects relating to free culture in digital libraries

Selling and collecting art in the network society: Interactions among contemporary art new media and the art market

Aquesta tesi explora i analitza les interaccions actuals entre art, nous mitjans i el mercat de l'art, i també les transformacions que es produeixen en el reconeixement de l'art digital, l'estructura del mercat de l'art i els rols de l'espectador i el col·leccionista. La tesi es divideix en tres parts. La primera part analitza les maneres en què l'art de nous mitjans s'ha definit ell mateix com un món de l'art específic, i les polèmiques que exemplifiquen la seva separació del món de l'art contemporani. La segona part analitza les motivacions i les expectatives dels artistes que treballen amb tecnologies emergents, per mitjà d'una enquesta feta per l'autor entre més de cinc-cents artistes de cinquanta països. La tercera part analitza les maneres en què l'art digital ha estat comercialitzat i els canvis recents en el mercat de l'art contemporani a internet.La presente tesis explora y analiza las interacciones actuales entre arte, nuevos medios y el mercado del arte, así como las transformaciones que se están produciendo en el reconocimiento del arte digital, la estructura del mercado del arte y los roles del espectador y el coleccionista. La tesis se divide en tres partes. La primera parte analiza las formas en que el arte de nuevos medios se ha definido a sí mismo como un mundo del arte específico, y las polémicas que ejemplifican su separación del mundo del arte contemporáneo. La segunda parte analiza las motivaciones y las expectativas de los artistas que trabajan con tecnologías emergentes, por medio de una encuesta realizada por el autor entre más de quinientos artistas de cincuenta países. La tercera parte analiza las maneras en que el arte digital ha sido comercializado y los cambios recientes en el mercado del arte contemporáneo en internet.The present dissertation explores and analyzes the current interactions among art, new media and the art market, as well as the ongoing transformations in the recognition of digital art, the structure of the market, and the role of the viewer and collector. It is divided into three parts. The first part analyzes the ways in which new media art has defined itself as a distinct art world, as well as the controversies that exemplify its separation from the mainstream contemporary art world. The second part exposes the motivations and expectations of artists working with emerging technologies by means of a survey carried out by the author among more than 500 artists from 50 countries. The third part discusses the ways in which digital art has been commercialized as well as the recent developments in the online contemporary art market

Intellectual property law and e-commerce in Sri-Lanka: towards a jurisprudence based on constitution, Roman-Dutch law and Buddhist principle

PhDModem developments in technology, connnerce and the cultural industries pose problems for intellectual property in Sri Lanka, as everywhere. Case law may be used for judicial guidance but there are comparatively few reported cases from the Sri Lankan courts. By examining Sri Lanka's juridical history and Constitution, together with constitutionally recognised Buddhist principles, it is possible to suggest further sources of guidance for judges. Using the proposed framework, it may be possible for the judges to apply existing law to new situations and avoid the need for constant legislative change in an attempt to keep up with developments and comply with Sri Lanka's international obligations. The extent to which such guidance may be useful is explored by looking at specific issues, which have caused difficulty in other jurisdictions. It is hoped that the proposed techniques could be used to build up a body of Sri Lankan jurisprudence. Ms may prove more stable and effective than incremental legislation. 'Status juris - 'Mis study (unless otherwise stated) based on material available as at 0 1.12.2004 and the law in force on that date