Research is needed into fraud detection as well as fraud prevention. Technical, social-science and policy research is also needed to understand how to balance privacy with fraud detection. This may include separate tags in a multimedia document for audio, image or the arrangement as a whole. These tags will facilitate voluntary payment of royalties and in principle can be brought into use very quickly. These terms should be in a standard form to facilitate automatic handling by a wide variety of applications.
Research is needed on technical means of enforcing licensing or copying restrictions.
Such mechanisms appear easier for executables than for movies or text, which can be copied from the bus or even the display. Mechanisms are needed for embedding contract terms in an application. Mechanisms are needed for detecting violation of contracts or escrow conditions and, finally, mechanisms are needed for enforcing contract conditions. Economic and policy research must determine how to handle liability for failure of software agents or damage done by those agents to other people's information systems. Such integration has implications for record keeping and privacy that need to be explored.