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2026
Paper (Preprint, Research Paper, Review Paper, White Paper, etc.)
Title
What Does ODRL Mean? A Cross-Level Ontological Grounding of Permissions, Prohibitions, and Duties in UFO-L
Title Supplement
Preprint at ArXiv. Accepted at FOIS 2026
Abstract
ODRL policy evaluators produce verdicts, but say nothing about the normative positions a policy brings into existence, the authority structures those positions presuppose, or who holds the power to declare a norm violated. We formulate the Cross-Level Design Principle: any normative language with violable, consequential norms requires both conduct-level positions (Permission, Duty, Right, No right) and competence-level positions (Power-Subjection, Immunity, Disability). Applying this to ODRL, we establish that prohibition is sanctioned (violation possible and consequential), that permission is underspecified across its behaviour parameter (open vs. closed world), and that the formal semantics covers achievement obligations only. We ground ODRL in UFO-L, mapping each activated rule to a simple legal relator and extending coverage from two to eight legal positions; violation-declaration authority, implicit in every existing evaluator, becomes an explicit Power, Subjection pair. All axioms are mechanically verified in Isabelle/HOL and across a 39-problem benchmark under Vampire, E, and Z3.
Author(s)
Open Access
File(s)
Rights
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
Language
English