hin the space of a few centuries, we have been reduced to a
name, just one name, all the "cleaner" because it has been stripped of all
humanity and reduced to a social security barcode. It's not something natural,
but a choice of the society, desired by managers. How could we run a modern
society and give back to Caesar his due if each of us could change our
administrative identity several times in our lives, from "Daredevil on Rollers"
to "Motorcycle on the Curves" and then "Hippy Smoking on the Verandah" (you
know, like me, that a simple software programme could easily take care of all
this)? "Human nature is basically evil and all criminals take advantage of that.
But we're here to protect you and your identity." (The Pentagon) And the first
thing a down-and-out person does to assert themselves, someone whose papers are
never in order, is to scribble their name on a billboard advertising some big
commercial product.

On our site, we discreetly try something else.

We exist, we have an address. We know it's hard to speak to each other in
anonymity or in a group, so we keep a few landmarks -- the time factor, the
human factor, and for the cutters, the cutter mailman, who happens to be
Jean-Paul. A first name that is not really one's own name because the thing
about a name is that it isn't ours, it's a name passed down by a dynasty, from a
string of legally-registered names of our male ancestors.

But we're not rejecting our ancestors. They created our world, what we call
reality. But we build up the Web to create another dream. And we launch our
cutters in all directions, to make contacts.

= What do you think of the debate about copyright on the Web?

We don't feel involved.

a) If it means "respect", it's a matter of morality and style, so there's
nothing to discuss. On the Web, as elsewhere, we quote our sources. Complete
respect. For most of us.

b) If it means "copyright", we're on legal ground, which is by nature shaky.
Copyright is a recent notion the French attribute to Beaumarchais, a business
man with a dark side, an arms dealer and great writer. The advent of
digitization, and therefore cloning (which raises a different problem to the one
of copying, which was solved long ago), forces us to reconsider this notion.

c) If it means "author's rights" (in the plural), we're in the economic field,
where we know what the attitude is: competition, withholding information, being
top of the class and stopping o