# Open Digital Rights Enforcement Framework (ODRE): from descriptive to enforceable policies

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.17602 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.17602/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 4 of its 29 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 26 Sep 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Code as Policies: Language Model Programs for Embodied Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.07753/) (2022)
- [Policy Patterns for Usage Control in Data Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.11289/) (2023)
- [Usage Control Specification, Enforcement, and Robustness: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.04800/) (2022)
- [User-driven Privacy Enforcement for Cloud-based Services in the Internet of Things](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.3325/) (2014)

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Evaluation and Comparison Semantics for ODRL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.05139/) (2025)
- [Axis-Aligned Semantics for ODRL: Resolving Dimensional Ambiguity in Policy Constraints](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.19878/) (2026)
- [A Formally Grounded ODRL Evaluator: Implementation and Comparison](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.15987/) (2026)
- [A Policy Profile for Croissant: Refusal as a Property of the Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.19640/) (2026)
- [Subjects, Not Authors: The Authorship Hazard in Agentic Dataspaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.30614/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

From centralised platforms to decentralised ecosystems, like Data Spaces, sharing data has become a paramount challenge. For this reason, the definition of data usage policies has become crucial in these domains, highlighting the necessity of effective policy enforcement mechanisms. The Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL) is a W3C standard ontology designed to describe data usage policies, however, it lacks built-in enforcement capabilities, limiting its practical application. This paper introduces the Open Digital Rights Enforcement (ODRE) framework, whose goal is to provide ODRL with enforcement capabilities. The ODRE framework proposes a novel approach to express ODRL policies that integrates the descriptive ontology terms of ODRL with other languages that allow behaviour specification, such as dynamic data handling or function evaluation. The framework includes an enforcement algorithm for ODRL policies and two open-source implementations in Python and Java. The ODRE framework is also designed to support future extensions of ODRL to specific domain scenarios. In addition, current limitations of ODRE, ODRL, and current challenges are reported. Finally, to demonstrate the enforcement capabilities of the implementations, their performance, and their extensibility features, several experiments have been carried out with positive results.