The WIPO director general told reporters in Geneva yesterday that "Piracy is like terrorism today and it exists everywhere and it is a very dangerous phenomenon... We would like to have consensus by all countries and all nations that piracy is a very dangerous phenomenon today"

This stuff is too important for this kind of claptrap, which really annoys me. People like Idris should be raising the level of the debate, not resorting to ridiculous soundbites. This adds absolutely nothing to the task of waking ordinary people up to the increasing importance of intellectual property laws - now a form of personal regulation not just industrial regulation of the creativity distribution industries, as used to be the case - explaining the complexities of the issues and addressing the problems of piracy and, more generally, balance in intellectual property laws.

After all, in a information society, intellectual property laws are the default rules of the road. Aaaaaargh - now they've got me using soundbites!