In recent years, the world has witnessed several milestone
events signaling the arrival of a new generation of global internet
companies. Apart from the much-hyped dawn of social media, there is
a much broader trend taking place, one that has outgrown the
traditional boundaries of the tech sector itself. "In
short," as Marc Andreessen wrote in a recent Wall Street
Journal
column, "software is eating the world." As
corresponding developments are happening in China, this new era has
caused and will continue to cause dramatic implications on the
monitoring and enforcement of intellectual property rights in the
country.
In the United States, consider the examples that Andreessen
cites in his article. With the fall of Borders earlier this year,
Amazon is now the largest bookseller in the US; but through the
power of software, Amazon is beginning to emerge as a threat to the
traditional retail industry. The most dominant and rapidly growing
distributors of music, movies,
