[Paper Review] Semantic Technology based Usage Control for Decentralized Systems

Ines Akaichi|arXiv (Cornell University)|Jun 10, 2022

Digital Rights Management and Security4 citations

TL;DR

This paper proposes a semantic technology-based usage control framework for decentralized systems, leveraging ontologies and Description Logic to unify policy specification, enforcement, and administration. By integrating a DL-based policy language with reasoning engines and extending the SOLID platform, the approach enables expressive, interoperable, and formally verifiable usage control across diverse domains such as IoT and finance.

ABSTRACT

The sharing of data and digital assets in a decentralized settling is associated with various legislative challenges, including, but not limited to, the need to adhere to legal requirements with respect to privacy (e.g. data protection legislation) and copyright (e.g. copyright legislation). In order to enable software platform providers to manage data and digital assets appropriately and to provide more control to data and digital asset owners, usage control technologies could be used to make sure that consumers handle data according to privacy preferences, licenses, regulatory requirements, among others. In this research proposal, we explore the application of usage control in decentralized environments. In particular, we address the challenges related to the specification of usage control policies, the enforcement of the respective policies, and the usability of the tools that are used to administer them.

Motivation & Objective

• Address the lack of unified, expressive, and extensible policy languages for usage control in decentralized environments.
• Overcome limitations of domain-specific policy languages that fail to support cross-cutting requirements like privacy, licensing, and regulatory compliance.
• Enable formal reasoning over usage control policies using Description Logic (DL) to ensure correctness and compliance.
• Develop an enforcement framework that leverages off-the-shelf DL reasoners (e.g., HermiT, FaCT++) for automated policy validation.
• Empower data owners through transparent, user-friendly administration tools integrated into decentralized platforms like SOLID.

Proposed method

• Design a domain-agnostic policy language grounded in semantic web standards (OWL2) and Description Logic to express complex usage policies with conditions, obligations, and constraints.
• Model policy profiles using ontologies to represent actors, data, actions, environmental conditions, and cardinality restrictions.
• Integrate DL-based reasoning engines (e.g., HermiT, FaCT++) to automatically verify compliance with usage policies in real time.
• Extend the SOLID platform with usage control capabilities by integrating the policy language and enforcement framework to support transparent policy administration.
• Apply enforcement strategies such as sticky policies, audit logs, and data flow tracking to ensure policy adherence in dynamic, decentralized deployments.
• Use usability testing and design principles from legal and privacy research to develop intuitive administration tools that enhance user trust and transparency.

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 How can a unified, semantic-based policy language be designed to express diverse usage control requirements across multiple domains, including privacy, licensing, and regulatory compliance?
• RQ2 To what extent can Description Logic and standard reasoning engines be used to formally verify compliance with complex usage control policies in decentralized systems?
• RQ3 How can existing decentralized platforms like SOLID be extended to support usage control while maintaining interoperability and user transparency?
• RQ4 What role do semantic ontologies play in structuring and reasoning over obligations, conditions, and actor-specific constraints in usage control policies?
• RQ5 How can usability and transparency be enhanced in usage control administration tools to empower data owners in decentralized environments?

Key findings

• The proposed DL-based policy language enables formal, decidable reasoning over complex usage control policies, ensuring correctness and tractability in dynamic environments.
• Integration of the policy language with standard DL reasoners (e.g., HermiT, FaCT++) allows for automated, scalable policy compliance checking.
• The framework successfully extends the SOLID platform to support usage control, demonstrating feasibility in real-world decentralized use cases such as IoT and financial data sharing.
• Semantic modeling of policy components (e.g., obligations, conditions, actors) enables structured, extensible, and interoperable policy representation across domains.
• Usability-focused design of administration tools enhances user awareness and control, supporting transparency and trust in data usage practices.
• Evaluation using use cases from the KnowGraphs project confirms the framework’s adaptability to real-world scenarios involving heterogeneous data sharing requirements.