From Laws to Programs: A Logical Design Approach Luigi Logrippo University of Ottawa, SITE and Université du Québec en Outaouais With thanks to Waël Hassan

Motivation The human world of E-Commerce is regulated by laws and regulations The electronic world of E-Commerce is populated by agents who follow programs Agents (machines) engage increasingly in legal behaviour, e.g. they negotiate and conclude contracts they can be in conflict and can be penalized their penalties will affect humans Programs must follow laws 09/04/2019

Where are we heading In the information society real people and automatic agents will have interchangeable roles Laws and programs will have to be seamlessly integrated Their resolution mechanisms will have to be seamlessly integrated Changes in laws should result in immediate changes in programs Osmosis between machine and human world 09/04/2019

Business Exchanges Web Service Consumer Agent Buy( Cell Phone , 15 day refund, GSM) Available ( Vendor : X, Address: Texas) Web Service Send a Request to Buy a cell phone , <100$, GSM) Rule & Policies( Refund 15 days) Item arrives 10 days after order Refund Item(7 days) after receipt Customer Service Rules Deny( Reason, 15 days Expired) Cell Phone defective Ottawa Law declares 15 days from Delivery You go and buy a cell phone You exchange refund policy 15 days.  you are happy You ask for ground shipping It takes 10 days You try to send it back 7 days after you bought it. Vendor returns it saying No refund (15 days from Order day expired) The Vendor is in Texas. Texan Laws do not enforce rule Canadian Laws enforce rule that 15 days is from Delivary Texan Law says 15 days from Purchase 09/04/2019

I have a set of Policies and Preferences myDocuments myLocation myContacts myApplication Settings myCalendar myInbox myWallet myMusic myNotifications myAddress myFavorite WebSites I have a set of Policies and Preferences Policy Interaction We have our rules and Policies Lets Agree on Policies The entire .NET Passport account covers a wide variety of applications we’re all familiar with MSN Messenger – note how easy it was to sign-up for this service if you were already a Hotmail user One of the key services is myWallet user’s credit card numbers and expiration dates, billing address, shipping address when user clicks on the .NET Passport express purchase link on the checkout page, they are redirected to their .NET Passport wallet page through a secure SSL connection info is transferred securely to merchant who uses it to complete the online purchase easy way for users to purchase online .NET Passport also available for mobile devices….but that’s a topic for another time Microsoft trying to take over the world? Source: Microsoft Corporation. (www.microsoft.com/net) I want to do Business What should happen in case the rules were conflicting or if they meant different things to each party 09/04/2019 Confidential

Technological Context On the law side, research is continuing in AI methods to (partially) automate logical deduction from laws to legal decisions The related topic in computing is the Feature Interaction problem: Agents being directed by policies to do conflicting things Conflicts between agents doing different things Conflicts between different levels of regulations for an agent Possibly leading to malfunctions or unexpected results Automatic conflict-resolution mechanisms may trigger in such situations 09/04/2019

Technological Context Automatic derivation of programs from requirements Complex methodology, because requirements are declarative do not necessarily include execution mechanisms are not necessarily complete 09/04/2019

What is the glue? What can keep it all together? The glue is old logic (perhaps deontic logic), and newer logic programming Laws, regulations, policies, programs can be cast in the unifying language of logic and logic programming 09/04/2019

Executable laws Laws and regulations expressed as logic programs are understood by the agents and executed Conflicts can be detected and solved at design time or (more difficult) at execution time Conflict-resolution mechanisms will draw the consequences of laws, policies, and regulations and will resolve conflicts in milliseconds Using automatic deduction 09/04/2019

A fertile research area Many interesting research topics at the crossroads of information society human law and legal theory computer programming and software engineering In the playfield of logic 09/04/2019