pdxjims, just one thing that you said that I might like to question: I disagree that not using using warez would discourage the warez community and they would cease making warez. (I'm talking about free warez, not pirated software that is for sale.) I don't think the warez wizards create warez as a community service. I think they do it as an ego thing: "See how smart I am! I am smarter than the guy who invented the protection scheme because I can defeat his protection scheme." Even if no one ever downloaded his cracked program he could still boast that he was the top dawg programmer. I have defeated a couple (simple) schemes myself. It was for software that I had purchased but did not like the protection scheme. I told people I had figured out how to do it, but I did not tell anyone else HOW to do it. But it gave me a lot of technical satisfaction to figure out how to "break into my own house" (so to speak). It was like getting some lock picking equipment and picking the lock on my own house. It felt good.