Trying to apply them – or antiquated legislative instruments – to any product that can be downloaded by anyone with a modem is kind of like your mom bringing out your first pair of baby shoes and insisting that you put them on your all-grown-up feet!

While it is popular, on both sides of the question, to get into arguments that are based on abstracts and intangibles, the kernel of the issue does not really have anything to do with differences in the way cultures perceive questions of “intellectual property” and the like, or whether such concepts even make it to a particular cultural radar, much less which way of viewing any given thing is “better” than someone else’s way.

In other words, it is not about what you or I consider to be “right” or “wrong,” it is about facts and reality.

Sometimes, it is the regimes, corporations, et al who apprise us of a new technology, a new reality, generally in the form of a new product. It is through them that we learn, for example, that we do not have to remain tethered to a plastic-cased spiral cord to talk on the telephone, or wait an hour to cook a potato. It is they who educate us about the fact that we can take our telephones with us in our cars, that a frozen dinner will require only ten minutes or so in a microwave.

But in this case, it is the “common people” who have learned about and adapted to the new reality. It has become a commonplace aspect of our lives, as taken for granted as electric lighting, while the regimes and the corporations are still floundering around like so many displaced trout, flopping themselves everywhere but back into the reality of water which they could breathe.

Advances in technology have always meant both opportunities and challenges for business, and the reality of all those ones and zeros swimming serenely around “cyber-space” is no exception.

The challenge will be stepping up with the vision to see and seize the opportunities!