Experiments in rights control : expression and enforcement

The Internet has transformed our long-term perception on working, entertainment, and living rapidly. We can now work comfortably in our own home, shop for our groceries without stepping outside the house, and enjoy high-quality entertaining digital content, such as music or lm. This digital content can easily be produced and copied with available digital technologies; and the content can be distributed and shared through the Internet almost effortlessly. This phenomenon has created a wide variety of usage scenarios, and has also induced huge loss to the lm and music\ud industry through piracy. To solve this problem, we have to protect the\ud digital content by controlling how the users are using the content. Thus, rights control has emerged as a potential solution

Licensing structured data with ease

In response to the need of a rights expression language (REL), we have proposed LicenseScript, an REL based on multiset rewriting and Prolog. LicenseScript has advantage over existing RELs, in the sense that it has a well-defined semantics. In fact besides semantics, LicenseScript has a lot of other advantages over other RELs. The mission of this paper is twofold: (1) to put a spotlight on these advantages, (2) at the same time justifying some of our design rationales in LicenseScript. We accomplish this by giving examples of licensing models that are greatly facilitated by the use of Prolog as a component of LicenseScript. At the same time showing\ud how LicenseScript makes these non-trivial models viable, we also make LicenseScript a stronger case than it previously might have occurred to be

How to pay in LicenseScript

Current DRM systems do not provide flexible payment methods, requiring the user to handle the payment by hand. For instance, when the user needs to pay for watching a movie, she needs to decide which available payment method is the most optimal and suitable. This is a rather cumbersome process for the user that can be avoided by the specification of payment policies. A payment policy automates the payment process of each content usage, choosing the best alternative among the possible payment methods. We show how LicenseScript is able to model payment policies, allowing the user to precisely specify how a payment of content usage should be performed

LicenseScript: A Novel Digital Rights Language and its Semantics

We propose LicenseScript as a new multiset rewriting/ logic based language for expressing dynamic conditions of use of digital assets such as music, video or private data. LicenseScript differs from other DRM languages in that it caters for the intentional but legal manipulation of data. We believe this feature is the answer to providing the flexibility needed to support emerging usage paradigms of digital data. We provide the language with a simple semantics based on traces

The collateral frameworks of the Eurosystem, the Federal Reserve System and the Bank of England and the financial market turmoil

In response to the turmoil in global financial markets which began in the second half of 2007, central banks have changed the way in which they implement monetary policy. This has drawn particular attention to the type of collateral used for backing central banks’ temporary open market operations and the range of counterparties which can participate in these operations. This paper provides an overview of the features of the different operational and collateral frameworks of three central banks that have been significantly affected by the crisis: the Eurosystem, the Federal Reserve System and the Bank of England. The paper describes the factors that shaped the three frameworks prior to the turmoil. It then describes the actions the three central banks took in response to the turmoil and analyses to what extent these actions were dependent on the initial design of the operational and collateral framework. JEL Classification: E52, E58, G01, G20.Collateral Framework, Central Bank Repo Auctions, Collateral, Open Market Operations, Financial Market Turmoil 2007-2009.

Service brokerage with Prolog

Service brokerage is a complex problem. At the design stage the semantic gap between user, device and system requirements must be bridged, and at the operational stage the conflicting objectives of many parties in the value chain must be reconciled. For example why should a user who wants to watch a film need to understand that due to limited battery power the film can only be shown in low resolution? Why should the user have to understand the business model of a content provider? To solve these problems we present (1) the concept of a packager who acts as a service broker, (2) a design derived systematically from a semi-formal specification (the CC-model), and (3) an implementation using our Prolog based LicenseScript language

The collateral frameworks of the Eurosystem, the Federal Reserve System and the Bank of England and the financial market turmoil

In response to the turmoil in global financial markets which began in the second half of 2007, central banks have changed the way in which they implement monetary policy. This has drawn particular attention to the type of collateral used for backing central banks’ temporary open market operations and the range of counterparties which can participate in these operations. This paper provides an overview of the features of the different operational and collateral frameworks of three central banks that have been significantly affected by the crisis: the Eurosystem, the Federal Reserve System and the Bank of England. The paper describes the factors that shaped the three frameworks prior to the turmoil. It then describes the actions the three central banks took in response to the turmoil and analyses to what extent these actions were dependent on the initial design of the operational and collateral framework