By Eileen K. McCluskey

The struggle between privacy and openness, monopolies versus mom-and-pop concerns, the resolution to these struggles will not come quickly or easily, Esther Dyson said Thursday morning.

Esther Dyson, speaking to the audience in Sanders Theatre Thursday morning.

Dyson, director of the advocacy group the Electronic Frontier Foundation and chairman of EDventure Holdings, said that while the monoliths of the Internet tend to be entrenched, they will survive if they can learn a few lessons from their pipsqueak competitors.

Large organizations tend to lose their view of customers and the outside world, said Dyson, whereas "small businesses care about the future outside themselves, whether they are for-profit or not-for-profit."

"Commercial and social enterprises are creating norms and examples that help to solve the problems," Dyson said For example, she said, about 15 companies now produce filters that users can install on their computers and customize to screen out whatever Web content the individual deems objectionable; just two years ago, there were eight such companies, Dyson said.

This kind of proliferation looks good to Dyson, who encourages and supports "turnover" in the information technology world as a way of avoiding entrenched monopolies.

There are also several companies now in the business of creating products to control spamming. Dyson spoke of Bright Light, which has built a fictitious cyber-person which can identify spam e-mail sources since, as Dyson points out, "this fictitious person has no friends, so any e-mail she receives is de facto spam." Another organization, called Trustee, has clearly captured Dyson's imagination. By policing Web sites and providing its se

al of approval only to those that act consistently with their stated mission and what its customers have agreed to, "Trustee replaces government regulations with customer regulations," Dyson said. "You should do what you say you are going to do." If you don't, Trustee takes action and will eventually sue, if need be.

These organizations are evidence of a thriving market, Dyson said. And she wants to preserve it.

To do so, she said, the Market needs turnover. Referring to Microsoft, she said, "I don't want to see anyone get entrenched. The question is, how do you create laws that stop rigid contracts from happening?"

She said she finds it disturbing that, especially through Web browser software, "PC's are turning into vending machines. And the individual may own the vending machine," but the real power lies in "who gets to decide what appears on the user's screen."

Such decisions are made, said Dyson, by the powers that be, such as Microsoft, who get to "charge monopoly rents" for space on its Web browser software's user interface.

Dyson believes this landlord greed could be effectively addressed by the government which, she said, should "balance competition."