Read the newspaper report from The International Herald Tribune, starting on page 2 of this assignment, and answer the following questions:
1. What is the general notion behind rights to intellectual property?
2. The article mentions that the United States has filed a complaint, accusing China of "failing to stop product piracy." The United States government filed this complaint at the request of U.S. corporations. Why are these companies upset about piracy? In other words, what is wrong with piracy from these companies' perspectives?
3. Piracy is illegal in China, but it occurs anyway. Why does this happen? (There are many reasons, and I am expecting you to identify and explain at least two.)
4. Suppose you were a Canadian business person thinking of exporting your products to China. How could the information contained in the newspaper report be helpful to you?
5. What is your opinion of intellectual property rights? Do you think people should have rights to intellectual property and, therefore, be protected by law? Why or why not? For example, file sharing contravenes laws protecting intellectual property. Should these laws be better enforced? Or, for example, should the government repeal the laws and make file sharing legal?