Online cultural imperialism: Is it an ethical issue?

Recently two reports appeared in the press, each of which expressed a very different attitude towards intellectual property. One, in the Australian press, discusses a bill before the US House of Representatives that would “give American copyright holders freedom to hack PCs used to illicitly share files over peer‐to‐peer (P2P) networks, without fear of prosecution or litigation”. That this represents a fairly strong view of the importance of intellectual property can be seen further as the report continues.