US Vice President Joe Biden has criticised foreign administrations that allow piracy of movies, music, and other technological products through a lack of intellectual property protection, issuing a called for a “global economic order” that moves to protect against the theft of intellectual property.

“What is at stake here is a lot more than just the value of ideas,” Biden told delegates in a Keynote Address at a Creativity Conference in Washington organised by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). “It literally is the character of the country involved in the theft. How can a nation say it is a law abiding nation when your government and your people steal the most valuable ideas from our country,” he asked. “Without international intellectual property protections, other countries often make no effort to protect it,” he contended.

He warned that countries that have let piracy run rampant would “remain second rate powers unable to generate that environment to nurture home grown innovation,” and that in the absence of such protection, it would not be created.

Biden said that given the changing nature of piracy, trade agreements were needed to update the rules of the road for a new era of globalisation. “If the field is even remotely level, we will succeed,” he said.

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