= What has happened since our first interview?
Since then, the CEVEIL has stopped putting out weekly news bulletins and its monthly magazine. This is not so much because we've changed direction but rather for want of staff and funding. We don't plan to resume those activities for the moment.
= What do you think of the debate about copyright on the Web?
Guy Bertrand: It's very important to respect copyright and it's up to the authors to decide what they want to do about it. The Web is offering more and more things for free. Authors don't have to accept that, but a growing number of them are choosing to adapt to it and are benefitting. The business models on the Web are changing very rapidly and will continue to. New ones will spring up with a strong free-of-charge content, but copyright will have to be respected in newer and more original ways by authors and providers of services and content.
Cynthia Delisle: Ideally, copyright should be respected on the Web as it is in other media such as the radio and the written press. However, the Internet raises new kinds of problems here because of the ease that data can be (re)produced and (re)distributed on a huge scale and because of the tradition of it being available for free. This tradition means people balk at paying for products and services they'd find it quite normal to pay for in other situations and they also perhaps have fewer qualms, in the context of the Net, about using pirated products. I think respecting copyright is one of the biggest issues for the future of the Net and it'll certainly be very interesting to see what solutions will emerge to deal with it.
= How do you see the growth of a multilingual Web?
Guy Bertrand: Worldwide e-commerce has grown enormously since 1998 and businesses are increasingly keen to use the languages of their potential customers, which is going to boost further this multilingual aspect. E-commerce won't take over the Web, but its importance is growing as multilingualism increases there. But the tools for multilingualism on the Web are unfortunately always one step behind.
Cynthia Delisle: I think the trend which had already begin in 1998 has now established itself and the future of the Internet is definitely going to be a multilingual one. The Net is becoming more international and it's hard to see how this can happen without it becoming linguistically and culturally more diverse. English will probably always be the Net's most frequently-used language, but the proportion of sites and pages available in other languages will steadily increase until a certain equilibrium is reached. I also quite agree with Mr Bertrand when he points out that the tools to handle this linguistic diversity are not yet ready. Machine translation, for example, has made woefully little headway in recent years. Yet the needs are growing all the time, which is why we need to step up research and development in these areas.
= What is your best experience with the Internet?
Guy Bertrand: My first one with the site www.neuromedia.com.