As a software developer there are other, legitimate reasons for doing things like this. They maybe trying to setup an autoupdate feature that goes out to their site to check for updates. 3d studio Max 2.5 had some sort of connect to the net thing as well that tried to verify if the version you had was legit. Maybe they are trying to set up some sort of version verification system and their new Poser 5 might need a dongle and ID. Maybe another is plugin updates. They are going to support Flash and VRML and the latest plugins might be needed. Then again, it could very well be a virus. It would be intersting to put a sniffer on the package and see what its actually sending. On big problem they maybe having is Metacreations might not have sold them their user base list. If that's the case and Curious wants to offer Poser 5 as an upgrade to Poser 4 it maybe ahrd for them to do. They could do like Adobe does with photoshop and just look on the disc for a Poser 4 setup and upgrade if that is available.