3-3.

Collectivism and individualism, democracy and totalitarianism,

rule of law and rule of man: What do these concepts say about IPRs
and the legitimacy of protection?
• The piracy of intellectual property rights (IPRs) is a massive business. MNEs,
governments, and transnational institutions have been fighting this issue for the
past 4-5 decades. You have two very different ideas at work when looking at
protecting IPRs.
• I believe individualism, rule of law, and democracy have been pushing to protect
IPRs way more than collectivism,totalitarianism, and rule of man. Individualism,
democracy and rule of law focus more on capitalism and protecting individuals
and companies that develop great technologies. Collectivism, totalitarianism and
the rule of manare more focused on the group as a whole and not the individual.
• If IPRs are stolen from the US by Chinese nationalists this means that the Chinese
government and citizens as a whole could benefit from this monetarily and through
an increase in standard of living depending on the ideas that were stolen.
3-4. What is the relationship among governments, transnational
institutions, and MNEs fighting piracy? Do they share similar or
different motivations?
• Technically, the standards of software piracy are unequivocal. Thus, parties have been
hopeful that collective political arrangements and legal actions by companies,
associations, governments, and institutions would lead to a decline in global software
piracy.
• However, coordinated anti-piracy initiatives such as high-profile legal proceedings
against companies using illegal software increased government cooperation in
providing legal protection for intellectual property, and the criminalization of software
piracy has proven to be largely ineffective.
• Even efforts at the transnational level to get nations to sign treaties and to require
them to protect and enforce intellectual property rights according to global, not local,
standards have not yielded the desired results. Unfortunately, the ease with which
software can be duplicated, sold, and distributed continues to baffle the industry.
Debate
WHAT TO WATCH
• Measuring the right set of discrete events -> the key to identifying and preventing
political risk -> requires identifying valid indicators creating problem-solving and
analyzing the root causes of risks.
• Collecting quantitative risk data (past, current, and future) -> developing forecasted
contingencies and diminishing actions maybe occurred (adaptive response).
• Research indicators to analyze proactive political risk management:
Pace of urbanization
Frequency of government crises
Degree of literacy
• For example, sentiment analysis identifies the emotion of using words and phrases in online
communications or the relative frequency of positive and negative words on internet activities. Another
example is about resenting autocratic rule before some weeks that violence in Egypt and Libya erupted.

• Delivering effective and proactive Risk Management needs an organization to have more clarity about
the breadth of risks facing the business and understand the potential threats and opportunities in
alignment with the overall business strategy in order to plan appropriate mitigation action. Also,
ensuring proper communication between all stakeholders across functions and harnessing the benefits
of technology are crucial elements to create greater business value.

• For instance, cooperating leveraging tools, such as artificial intelligence (AI), and process automation
-> establishing technology drivers of risks.