About LEA-online.net
This website aims at providing a forum for investigating the law of electronic agents, taking into account the most recent advances in the study of autonomous agents and multi-agent systems, as well as the societal, economic and legal framework in which agent-based systems are employed.
Motivation
As electronic agents enter the information environment and electronic marketplaces, they engage in a number of activities which are significant for the law: accessing computer systems and networks, retrieving and spreading information, mediating personal and business relations, buying and selling material and immaterial goods.
Through such activities agents may trigger off relevant consequences for their users, owners and developers, as well as their counter-parties, consequences pertaining to different areas of the law, such as contract, tort, criminal responsibility, intellectual property and data protection. How to legally conceptualise and regulate agent-based interactions is both a stimulating theme for lawyers and legal theorists, and a crucial issue for the success of agent-based applications and the secure and trustworthy development of the information society.
On the other hand, agent-based interactions can be governed according to legal models based upon the theory of norms and normative relations.
Topics of interest
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- agents and trust
- the autonomy of agents
- legal capacity and personality of agents
- legal relevance of agents’ mental states
- ownership and other entitlements over agents
- agents as holders of rights, duties and powers
- agents as legal representatives
- agents as mediators in legal transactions
- agent to-agent and agent-to-human interaction in a legal perspective
- contracts made through/by agents (contractual liability)
- liability for the damage caused by agents (liability in tort)
- agents and data protection
- agents and copyright/patent/sui generis/know how infringement
- intellectual property rights over agent-based software
- agents and computer crimes
- agents as self-enforcing regulatory tools
- agents and dispute resolution
- codes of conduct and best practices for agents
- regulatory proposals for agents in electronic commerce
- agents for legal practice
- consumer protection
- digital rights management as a network application
- use of agents for law enforcement and the law of evidence
- agent-based simulation of legal relations and istitutions
- normative agent architectures and models
- computational logics for normative agents and virtual institutions
Postal address
The postal address of the IIDS research group and the website maintainers is:
Intelligent Interactive Distributed Systems
Department of Computer Science
Division of Mathematics and Computer Science
Faculty of Sciences
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
de Boelelaan 1081a
1081 HV
Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Fax Number: +31 (0)20 4447653
For questions regarding the LEA or IIDS, or for more information on the
research topics, please contact
the LEA-online Webmaster
