| dc.description.abstract | The amount of detailed personal information being recorded electronically about individuals is
growing rapidly. The increasing commercial pervasiveness of the Internet is a major factor in
this growth. This information has a significant economic value yet it is only relatively recently
that data subjects have begun to expect and receive some reward for the surrender and/or use of
their information. It is considered likely that this trend will continue, producing a growing
uneasiness over the erosion of personal privacy. In time, legislation or acceptable practice may
oblige data users who wish to gather consumer information, to pay data subjects to provide that
information.
The mechanics and logistics of data subjects supplying their own information to data users
necessitates an automated system to carry out the transactions. Any such system has to be able
to cope with the widest variety possible of data formats and quantities. It should allow the data
sellers to specify at a very fine-grained level which information should be sold as what price. It
should allow data users to stipulate what type of `souls? they are seeking, how many and how
much they want to spend.
This dissertation describes a system called the Soul Seller System that attempts to provide such
facilities. The system is based on mobile agent technology called Aglets. Data subjects provide
information about themselves via a web page. This data is passed to a selling Aglet (a `soul
seller?) that then represents the data subject in transactions with the `soul buyers?, other Aglets
who each represent a data user seeking information. When initially created, both types of Aglets
dispatch themselves to a central Aglet server, the `marketplace? where soul buyers and sellers
can meet each other. A conversation is initiated where soul buyers tell soul sellers what
information they are seeking. The soul sellers respond with the price this information would
cost. If the price is considered suitable, money and information are exchanged. Both data
subjects and data users can track what transactions have been carried out in their name via a web
page.
While the Soul Seller System works well on a small scale, problems are experienced when
attempts are made to scale it up. This is due to the limit on the number of Aglets that can be run
on just one Aglet server. Two possible solutions include using a database to represent the soul
sellers or to permit multiple marketplaces thereby enlarging the capacity of the system. It is
concluded that basing the transactions exclusively on Aglets is useful when developing a
prototype but would not be appropriate for the full application version. | en |
