Are mobile agents outlawed processes

An important characteristic of mobile agents is that they often do not run on their user’s platform, but on the platform of someone else. There often is no pre-existing relation between the ’owner’ of the running agent’s process and the owner of the platform on which the agent process runs. When there are conflicts the position of the owner is not clear: is he allowed to slowdown the process or even remove it from the system? And how can the interests of the owner of the agent be protected? This paper explores the legal and technical perspectives to protecting the integrity of agent processes.