Let's say you are creating software project. You are then automatically protected by the copyright law, this means that you are the one who decides on how your work should be distributed and copied. Let's say you now decide to open source the project, as the copyright owner you can then license the software under the terms in for example GPL or BSD etc. Without this basic right that license would be worth nothing, and some one could simply take it, re-package it and take credit for it.
Related to this article, a weakened copyright law could just as well be harmful to local economy since foreign companies may just chose to not make business there, like some companies treat for example China.
Check this informative lecture by Richard Stallman on software patents, and the confusion with copyright and the so called IP. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmKy_LP6JPQ&feature=relat...
(it starts about 2 min in)