Policies to Regulate Distributed Data Exchange

Abstract

Data sharing is becoming an integral part of many aspects of our daily lives. We propose a method for controlling access to data and knowledge through fine-grained, user-specified explicitly represented policies. We present an overview of a policy formalism and mechanisms to facilitate distributed data sharing. We provide a breakdown of how our approach defines compliance and violation, specifically providing a new outlook on violation of permissions within the context of data sharing. We also examine how our mechanisms have been adapted to support socially responsible interactions between participants, whilst still providing them with control over their own data. We also explore a series of planned experiments investigating how users understand and interact with policies in a simplified version of our formalism.