Report Number: CS-TR-98-1607
Institution: Stanford University, Department of Computer Science
Title: A Network-Centric Design for Relationship-Based Rights
Management
Author: Roscheisen, Martin
Date: May 1998
Abstract: Networked environments such as the Internet provide a new
platform for communication and information access. In this
thesis, we address the question of how to articulate and
enforce boundaries of control on top of this platform, while
enabling collaboration and sharing in a peer-to-peer
environment. We develop the concepts and technologies for a
new Internet service layer, called FIRM, that enables
structured rights/relationship management. Using a prototype
implementation, RManage, we show how FIRM makes it possible
to unify rights/relationship management from a user-centered
perspective and to support full end-to-end integration of
shared control state in network services and users' client
applications. We present a network-centric architecture for
managing control information, which generalizes previous,
client/server-based models to a peer-to-peer environment.
Principles and concepts from contract law are used to
identify a generic way of representing the shared structure
of different kinds of relationships.
http://i.stanford.edu/pub/cstr/reports/cs/tr/98/1607/CS-TR-98-1607.pdf