The following paper examines the ethical issues that relate to privacy, free speech, and protection of Intellectual Property
Rights (IPR) with regards to the present era. The writer examines how all knowledge depends to a large extent on prior knowledge. The issue of innovators having the right to exclusive benefit from his innovation or creation
does seem to exist in principle, however this paper examines the strong need to properly define and delimit those rights. Similarly this paper examines the equally strong ethical case for such delimitation to protect people's right to privacy and free speech, which are sometimes at variance with one another. As the world is rapidly shrinking due to the communication revolution, new universally accepted laws are required to deal with these questions.