ABSTRACT
As Asia faces the global economy of the future, it is necessary to take stock of the once arcane issue of intellectual property. The ability to manufacture cheaply computer software, music, movies, and textbooks that are of the same quality as the original has resulted in a threat posed by intellectual property consumers to intellectual property owners (Negroponte, 1995). While the philosophically oriented may see the digital age as an opportunity to rethink authorship, creativity, and private property, others view it as an era of massive theft (Grabosky et al., 2001). When the ease of reproduction is combined with the networked world of the Internet, the laws of copyright created in the eighteenth century seem ready to topple. In response, expansive new laws are passed in an effort to maintain control of information even as that control becomes impossible.
