Axis-Aligned Semantics for ODRL: Resolving Dimensional Ambiguity in Policy Constraints
Abstract
The Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL) represents policy constraints as triples of a left operand, an operator, and a value. Several spatial operands, however, range over multi-axis domains such as width, height, and depth, while the constraint syntax provides no explicit axis identity. As a result, policy engines cannot determine whether multiple constraints apply to the same axis or different ones, making conflict detection unsound or incomplete. We resolve this ambiguity by axis decomposition, replacing multi-axis operands with axis-specific scalar operands over totally ordered domains. Each constraint then denotes an interval per axis and each policy an axis-aligned box, reducing conflict detection to box comparison. We define a three-valued semantics (Conflict, Compatible, Unknown), prove the decomposition sound and backward compatible with ODRL, instantiate it as ODRL Axis-Aligned Profile (OAAP), and validate it on a benchmark of 256 ODRL policy problems, each expressed in Turtle and compiled to first-order (TPTP) and SMT-LIB form, using Vampire, E, Z3, and cvc5.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2602.19878,
title = {Axis-Aligned Semantics for ODRL: Resolving Dimensional Ambiguity in Policy Constraints},
author = {Daham Mustafa and Diego Collarana and Sabrina Kirrane and Christoph Lange and Christoph Quix and Rafiqul Haque and Yixin Peng and Stefan Decker},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.19878},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
17 pages. Preprint. v3: expanded benchmark to 256 problems; revised semantics and profile (OAAP)