This, by default, should mean that, on the part of the agents, these features have to be provided at all sales points and guaranteed, as part of the high purchase price, wherever the product is on sale.

With illicit copying, none of the sales money gets back to the software firm, which has either bought all rights or employed the designer to develop the product.

This raises a question: Where, in natural law, does someone who has designed something assume full rights over that design? Nowhere, of course.

By unholy hazard or grand design, cosmic intelligence or GoD (Generator of Designs, according to philosopher Tony Moore), there is no copyright, as this is very much a freewheeling universe.

In man's conditioned universe, from the time of our early craftsmen, original work was paid according to the merit it rated, and from earliest times the only way to copy a masterpiece was to build another one.

Even if it was not quite as good as the original, it deserved almost the same price because of the work entailed.

Technology has made it possible to instantly copy computer software. It is antiquated thinking (also monopolist and money-grubbing) to demand that a false price be placed on an item that can be instantly and cheaply copied.

As soon as this capability was achieved, the entire game changed, and software firms must recognise this.

Four centuries ago the Roman Catholic Church turned on Galileo Galilei for saying the universe was ordered not quite as the church had it.

So great was the general fear generated by Galileo's insight that the sun was the centre of our solar system (and not our little earth) that the authorities threatened to burn him alive (his contemporary Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake).

So Galileo withdrew his statement about our solar system circumscribing a central sun and offered a disclaimer instead.

Today we witness what happens when an institution cannot follow the changes: it establishes monopolies and writes new laws to cover contingencies that threaten its hold on the market.

The comment is often made that software will cease to be developed if pirating is not stopped, because it will not be worthwhile for developers.

Not true.

If it takes a designer six months to design and develop an application, then the warranted payment is six months' salary for the man-hours put in. That's all.

If a company insists on holding the rights to such a program, that company then deserves the equivalent of six months' salary as well.

Society could even be extra generous and give five times that sum because, after all, companies have administrations and directors. But winning firms in the software business speak of billions of dollars in annual profits.

In any real world, people put a penny to a penny when summing up the worth of goods or services. In the real everyday world, these dizzying figures of large corporations are beyond conception. In fact, they are nonsense because no one can find those dollars. Ask the United States government to account for its world debt. There is not that much gold in circulation, never mind Fort Knox.

The money is on paper, in assets, stocks, shares, joint operations and diversified investments. But that has nothing to do with the designer, cost of design and development and the on-the-street price level. That is the level we have to deal with as consumers.

Someone on the street who wants to use that software, and who understands the state of modern technology and the ease with which these things can be copied and shared, should not have to pay that false price.

Those who do make the purchase learn that there are conditions to its use, and that it certainly cannot be shared. There is a question here: in all the world, when you purchase an item, it is yours. If it is yours, then you can do what you want with it.

Yes, certain items have conditions attached. A photograph can be hired for one-time use, and the photographer gets the original back. A book can be borrowed, read and returned, or bought at a reasonable price.

Of course, you can photocopy a book, but it would be too much trouble, and certainly lacking the ease that technology allows for copying software.

This is because the attitude taken by today's business institutions to technology is much like that of the church when it refused to see and adopt new revelations.

The de-restriction of copyright will not stop designers from coming up with new applications. Designers, like artists and craftsmen, are compelled by their talents and find fulfilment in their work. Also, they need to feel useful, and their creativity makes their lives meaningful.

The independence of the artist-craftsman-designer can be opposed only by those with vested interests - the corporations with narrow interests that fight for their own survival in the jungle they themselves have made.

When prices are reasonable, and access available to technology from all over the world, then global sharing will take place spontaneously.

The whole earth society will advance in one grand step, and the technology gap will be bridged.

When there is equal opportunity and universal access, when technology is freed from limiting patents and restricted rights, then our society will be ready to go forward, entering the unknown and yet not losing the human scale of things.

Tony Henderson is chairman of the Humanist Association of Hong Kong