About ALIAS
Analysing Legal Implications and Agent Information Systems
The ALIAS project studies the legal and technical implications of the
use of software agents, by combining the expertise within:
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The Intelligent Interactive Distributed
Systems Group at the Vrije Universiteit
Amsterdam. This group's research focuses on support for the development of
large scale intelligent, interactive, distributed systems. This includes
middleware (AgentScape), services (an agent factory and directory services),
applications (distributed information retrieval and distributed design).
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The Computer Law Institute
at the Vrije Universiteit studies both the legal
implications of the use of IT and the prospects and limits of using IT for
legal practice. Agents are one of the key research issues.
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The Center for Law, Public Administration and
Informatization at the University of Tilburg focuses its research on
legal implications of
Information and Communication Technologies, regulatory issues concerning ICT
and re-conceptualization of law in light of developments such as
de-materialization, de-territorialisation, de-identification and loss of human involvement.
Goal of the research effort
Properties associated to agents such as autonomy, pro-activity, reasoning,
learning, collaboration, negotiation, and social and physical manifestation,
are properties developed by man. Notions such as anonymity and privacy acquire
new meanings in the "digital world". New concepts such as pseudo-anonymity
emerge. Until now much research on deployment of information technology has
been done within separate disciplines. Computer Science and AI develop the
technical expertise and applications. Law fits these applications into existing
legal frameworks (taking US, European and Dutch traditions into account),
proposing new frameworks if and when needed. In this project the two
disciplines AI and Law are collaboratively investigating the legal
possibilities and limitations of agent technology, ultimately leading to
recommendations for both disciplines.
Acknowledgement
The NLnet Foundation funds the research of this project.
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Page last modified: July 4th, 2003
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