Investigating Regulative Implications for User-generated Content and a Design Proposal

Abstract

The rapid increase of the Internet connectivity and the data publishing activity, like user-generated content, has lead Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to establish more efficient mechanisms for content delivery, such as caching. Mechanisms such as content-aware-networks and in-network caching reduce network load, server load, and user response time, thus, manage the network. However, caching of content also raises major implications in terms of legal acts and bills (e.g., data privacy, copyright), dealing with access control, validation scheme, and regulations (e.g., contractual obligation, legal restrictions).In general, user-generated content is linked with sensitive information, such as geographical information, medical and financial information, personal identifiable data, photos, videos, and contact information. Therefore, it is essential to secure data and regulate access. The latter, is gained by including access control mechanisms in the data exchange process, where a user requesting data must prove his access rights. Therefore, a user has to show an access ticket, which includes his rights based on legal and regulative implications. In order to secure any kind of data exchange, authentication of each participating communication entity (e.g., content owner, server, and end-user) is essential, which is part of the proposed two-way authentication handshake in this paper that is performed to generate a secure communication channel.The main contribution of this paper is to show that transmission, storage, and usage of user-generated data in caches within the network is manageable within the legal laws on sensitivity, copyright, and privacy. The scope of studying these laws, acts, and policies is restricted to Switzerland (CH), the European Union (EU), and the United States of America (USA). Finally, a solution is presented including access ticketing and two-way authentication mechanisms based on common standards from IP networks.