HONG KONG, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Public policymakers should create favorable and safe environments for intellectuals to exert their originality as well as to preserve the value of knowledge, Hong Kong Financial Secretary Henry Tang said Monday.

Sharing his views on the roles of governments in the digital world with top world leaders in the information and communications technology industry at the ITU Telecom World 2006 Forum on Monday, Tang said the key asset in the digital world is knowledge.

"Digitalization changed the way information is processed, stored, transferred and presented, immensely improving the efficiency of such activities. Together with the expanding reach of the Internet and the increasing amount of content being made available on this platform, it has become far easier for people or businesses from all over the world to obtain and disseminate information," he said.

"But information has to be processed and internalized before it becomes knowledge. And it is the knowledge possessed by individuals or companies that will provide a competitive edge in the digital world," Tang added.

Tang thought governments have the responsibility to reduce the "digital divide" in a modern society. To ensure the digital world is open to all.

On intellectual property rights protection, Tang said knowledge is valuable to productivity and competitiveness when it is used for the creation of information goods. However, the nature of information goods is such that while it may take a significant amount of matter or energy to create them, it costs practically nothing to reproduce them.

"This is detrimental to the innovative use of knowledge in the digital world and the problem can only be alleviated through a stringent system of intellectual property rights," he said.

Tang told forum participants that Hong Kong has set up law-enforcement teams dedicated to tackling Internet piracy through round-the-clock monitoring.

He called on governments and law enforcement agencies around the world to work together to protect information in the digital world.