Securing uniqueness of rights e-documents: a deontic perspective

We typically think of documents as carrying information. However, certain kinds of documents do more than that: they are not only informative but also performative in that they represent rights. When these documents are in paper form or some other physical medium, holding the document indicates holding the right. Since the document represents a right, a hazard is that by duplicating the document, one may fraudulently claim a new right. For this reason, physical documents that represent rights are both tamper resistant and copy resistant. However, problems arise when such performative documents are converted to electronic form: duplicates are bit for bit perfect and undetectable. Thus, the normal heuristic of uniqueness of the document token as representing the uniqueness of the right no longer holds for performative electronic documents. This is especially challenging when the rights are transferable, as with various financial instruments such as stocks and bonds. This paper presents an analysis, based on deontic logic, about the necessary requirements for electronic documents and their corresponding electronic procedures in order to guarantee the uniqueness of rights and prevention of fraud. A design is sketched, based on a notion we call digital parchment, which offers improved flexibility.