A Logical Framework For Ethical Behavior Between Infohabitants In The Information Trading Economy of the Universal Information Ecosystem. IST-1999-10298.
The new millennium will witness the deployment of a significant number of diverse information systems […] The complete integration of these situated, embedded and intelligent systems is a vision of the Universal Information Ecosystem (UIE). […] The ALFEBIITE project will investigate the application of formal models of norm-governed activity to the definition, management and regulation of interactions between infohabitants in the UIE. Current techniques for controlling interactions in distributed systems are based on mechanistic procedures, so that integrity relies on encryption, passwords, firewalls and so on. As the software processes in distributed information systems become more intelligent […] there is a need to enhance these procedures. ALFEBIITE aims to supply this enhancement with formally specified, socially motivated, anthropomorphic relations, such as trust, authority, reputation, etc. In particular, we are interested in explaining how trust is created by otherwise arbitrary signifiers (e.g. hallmarks, logos, official stamps), how the same action performed in different contexts can embody a different set of social commitments and possibly legal consequences, and how interactions between individuals and/or organizations are empowered by third party institutions.

Websites
ALFEBIITE website

Partners
Imperial College of London, Department of Electrical Electronic Engineering, Department of Computing
University of Oslo, Department of Philosophy,
Norwegian Research Centre for Computers and Law University of Karlskrona/Ronneby, Department of Computer Science Queen’s University of Belfast, Department of Law