Augmenting the web with accountability

Given the ubiquity of data on the web, and the lack of usage restriction enforcement mechanisms, stories of personal, creative and other kinds of data misuses are on the rise. There should be both sociological and technological mechanisms that facilitate accountability on the web that would prevent such data misuses. Sociological mechanisms appeal to the data consumer’s self-interest in adhering to the data provider’s desires. This involves a system of rewards such as recognition and financial incentives, and deterrents such as prohibitions by laws for any violations and social pressure. Bur there is no well-defined technological mechanism for the discovery of accountability or the lack of it on the web. As part of my PhD thesis I propose a solution to this problem by designing a web protocol called HTTPA (Accountable HTTP). This protocol will enable data consumers and data producers to agree to specific usage restrictions, preserve the provenance of data transferred from a web server to a client and back to another web server, and more importantly provide a mechanism to derive an audit trail' for the data reuse with the help of a trusted intermediary called a Provenance Tracker Network'.