Esther Dyson is the editor of "Release 1.0," the highly influential technology newsletter, and author of the best-selling "Release 2.0."

As chairman of Edventure Holdings (www.edventure.com), a global information services company, she has positioned herself at the heart of the converging worlds of technology, communications and the Internet.

She is a regular at major global conferences such as the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, and has taken a special interest in technology development in Eastern Europe.

Dyson served as founding chairman of ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the international agency charged with setting policy for the Internet's core infrastructure independent of government control.

Some of her recent topics have included "For Prague, The Floods May Provide Sea Changes" and "What's Next for AOL?"

Her unique position as technology thinker and entrepreneur has made her a valued source of information for industry leaders who rely on her to keep them ahead of the curve in an ever-changing market. Wired magazine called Dyson a "one-woman think-tank."

RELEASE 3.0: NEW SERVICE TRIES TO VANQUISH SPAM

c.2002 EDventure Holdings Inc.

I've always thought that someone should set up a system so users can charge the senders of e-mail spam. Now someone is getting ready to implement an idea that's pretty close ... and I want it!

Vanquish, a start-up organized by Philip Raymond, a longtime electronics and IT entrepreneur, plans to offer a bonding service that tries to protect users from potential spammers.

The service doesn't exactly catch spam. It tries to stop spammers from sending it in the first place. And rather than pay recipients who complain of spam, the infringing sender pays the bonding service. The effect, however, is the same.

Vanquish puts the burden on senders. They need to know enough about the recipient to correctly judge whether their e-mail will be considered spam. If they're wrong too often, they pay more and more, or lose the ability to send mail to those recipients altogether.

In other words, sending spam is no longer free, and regular market economics works again.

Let's look at Vanquish _ rolling out this winter if all goes well _ from the points of view of the legitimate sender, the spammer, and finally the recipient, who should have to do very little other than install the software and enjoy freedom from spam.

PLEASED TO MEET YOU ... MAYBE

The legitimate sender, call him Juan, wants to establish himself as someone Alice wants to receive mail from, although he doesn't know her. He can get a friend of a friend to forward an e-mail using one of those alumni or six-degrees services. Or he can try her cold.

Say he knows Alice is a pilot, and he's pretty sure she'll appreciate a message about the launch of the new Eclipse 500 jet. He writes a nice, friendly message _ clear subject line with no "!!!!" _ and sends it off.

Almost immediately he gets a reply ... but not from Alice. It's from Alice's ISP, a Vanquish partner.

While he's never heard of Vanquish or the ISP, he can tell it's not spam because its subject line says: "Your message to Alice about 'Eclipse Aviation launch.'"

It tells him that Alice is a subscriber to Vanquish's "mail-bonding service," and invites him to sign up.

But this one time, it tells him, all he has to do is pass a simple test to prove that he is a human and not a machine or a spoofed return address. If he can answer a simple question _ for example, "What is a kitten when it grows up?" _ it will let his message through.

Meanwhile, Juan is curious about this Vanquish service, and he decides to learn more.

Vanquish tells him that Alice and an increasing number of other people are asking for their correspondents to bond their e-mail.

The idea is that he puts up a guarantee, with a credit card or through his own ISP, that no recipient of his mail will click a "penalty button."

That feature is displayed in each message in a Vanquish-protected inbox and is compatible with Microsoft Outlook, Eudora and other mail tools and browsers. It lets the user either penalize or penalize-and-banish-forever.

Each such penalty costs, say, 35 cents, up to the sender's own credit limit with the bonding agent. He decides to sign up, and he starts to think a little more carefully about the mail that he sends.

The spammer, of course, sends a message to Alice along with thousands to other people, and never notices the bounce-back reply. He fails to reply to the Vanquish query, and his e-mail is deleted after a few days in quarantine at the Vanquish-protected mail server.

Alice, for her part, is delighted to receive Juan's invitation, and she adds him to her address book, which remains on her computer.

Now he can send her e-mail without being queried by Vanquish, even if he doesn't bond it. But he doesn't know that. Meanwhile, Vanquish has gained a customer.

After some months, however, Alice's interest in Juan diminishes. She doesn't quite know how to tell him, though, so the next time she gets a message from him she selects penalize-and-banish.

BEHIND THE SCENES

Vanquish's business model relies primarily on the monthly fees from e-mail service providers and from direct subscribers.

If the service works, there will be few penalties, since senders will monitor themselves or ultimately lose the chance to play. That's not much of a threat right now. But as ISPs adopt the service, they may reject customers who use up their bond limits. And, of course, the whole idea of the service is to spread broadly.

Vanquish's bonding service gives the "bonded sender" a digital certificate and software that bonds his mail automatically.

For the recipient, Vanquish is generally a service provided by an ISP or e-mail provider. Alternatively, a customer can sign up for a Webmail version.

"There are no filters to maintain and strangers can still reach you, but they won't unless they are confident you will be receptive to their message," says Raymond. "Your finger is never far from the penalty button."

To help the idea catch on, Vanquish plans to start with a few ISPs who will market the spam-deterrence (not spam-filtering) service to their customers _ probably as value-added service rather than as an extra one. Their customers, in turn, will "market" it to the people who e-mail them.

Over time, Vanquish is unlikely to be the only outfit offering such a service, despite its pending patent on the various processes involved.

The idea is too good not to spread, one way or another.

Whether it's due to Vanquish, Vanquish owned by some giant, or some giants on their own, more and more fed-up users will see we're reaching a tipping point with spam.

And that makes a service that not long ago seemed excessive _ and even incompatible with the open Internet _ now look necessary.

(For more information on Vanquish, go to www.vanquish.com/friends.)