BIB-VERSION:: CS-TR-v2.0
          ID:: STAN//CS-TR-98-1607
       ENTRY:: May 18, 1998
ORGANIZATION:: Stanford University, Department of Computer Science
       TITLE:: A Network-Centric Design for Relationship-Based Rights
               Management
        TYPE:: Thesis
        TYPE:: Technical Report
      AUTHOR:: Roscheisen, Martin
        DATE:: May 1998
       PAGES:: 128
    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.
       NOTES:: [Adminitrivia V1/Prg/19980518]
         END:: STAN//CS-TR-98-1607