More precisely, Georgia Tech Lorraine, a higher education institute in Metz, France, and a branch of Atlanta's Georgia Institute of Technology, is being prosecuted for not using French on it's World Wide Web home page. Georgia Tech fin ds itself one of three cases progressing through the French courts that will test the jurisdiction of those courts over the Internet. It may also demonstrate the inability of La Belle France to hold back the tide of Anglo-Saxon that flows across the Internet.

So, you may ask, what exactly did Georgia Tech Lorraine do wrong? Under a law introduced in France in 1994, certain classes of communication, including advertising, while allowed in any language, must be accompanied by a French translation. The "Loi Toubon," introduced by Jacques Toubon when he was the French minister of culture, allows any of five agencies chartered to defend the French language to bring legal action against transgressors. It may just be a coincidence but Toubon is now the French minister of justice.

Georgia Tech Lorraine is defending its English-only pages on legal grounds, although it fully intends to prepare French translations at some point. It just doesn't feel the law applies to its Web pages. The school is arguing th at some of the pages are intended for students who are required to attend lectures in English.

Indeed, one of the attractions of Georgia Tech Lorraine for students is surely that it has the same entrance requirements and standards as the prestigious Georgia Institute of Technology, in Atlanta, and surely they value exposure to the English tongue with an American twang and to U.S. cultural values.

A second argument is that many of the pages are connections to the Institute's headquarters, in Atlanta, and therefore inevitably in English. A third argument is that the Web pages only provide information and are not advertisements, although that available jobs are described on those pages makes that a tough one to defend.

Of course, to avoid a possible fine of about $5000 for each offense, Georgia Tech Lorraine could simply prepare its web pages in private and send them to Atlanta, for display on a U.S. server. But that would be too simple. There is more at stake here. This court case is a test o f freedom of speech on the Internet. Or as some would see it, the right of the French to preserve their language and culture, to resist the destruction of diversity by the information superhighway or, more simply, to know in their own language what is happening in their own country.

English is already the common language of electronic engineering and computer science and, to a large extent, Western popular music. So let me conclude with two questions that you can answer via our Forum. Should English be the dominant language of the Internet? And if, you answered "yes" to the first question and have English as your first language, are you happy to be thought of as a cultural imperialist?

A ruling by the French courts is expected on February 24th.

Peter Clarke is EE Times's London-based European correspondent. He will dispatch these Letters from Europe periodically.

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