I guess if youve never ad a dongle fail during a critical project, or spent a couple of hours figureing out, installing and configurig a license server, or made a commitment on a project figuring that you had the correct 3D meshes in hand to finish the job only to find that the particular mesh would not open up in the SW or SW version you have. Well then, I guess you would not know what this threat is about. I have had the joy of two of the instances above, License servers can give even the most laid back person a migrane. And having a hardware key go on vacation during a time critical project can raise the blood pressure of a whole lot of people really fast. Think about it, you have a single application network server, and that server has the host 3D application on it. 8 workstations run the software loaded on the network server. The dongle drops dead which is on the network server. Your 8 artists logon open the application and wham, error message "Hardware Key Not Found" Even if the server had a catastrophic failure you could load up the sw on one of the work stations and get by until the server was fixed, But without the dongle you are SOL. Gotta wait for a replacement from the manufacturer, which depending where you live, time of year, phase of the moon and what some guy in Indiana had for breakfast could take a very long time. Meanwhile you have at least 8 people sitting around twiddling their thumbs because they can't do thier work. Why? becaues of paranoia over what is basically a non issue. No one here is advocating stealing 3ds Max or Maya or anyother sw. People steal cars mainly to sell the parts and enrich themselves. But in the case of pirated high end 3D graphics packages to 99% of the users the SW has Zero monetary value. Since the majority of the pirated stuff is freely available out on the net. If the pirates were making money off of the stuff well then there would be a case but on the whole they do not make one single dime. Nor do I figure 99% of the users of such software make any money off of it. The primary market that high end packages (Vue Infinite, Lightwave, 3DS MAX, Maya, Softimage etc) are industry professionals, schools, Ad agencies, Effects houses, and Gaming developers. These businesses Must be able to rely on the software and have to have support else they risk blowing deadlines, not being able to deliver etc. They can not risk using pirated sw. So who else out there would want the stuff bad enough to steal it, no one that is who. This stuff is pirated mainley as a rebellion against $10,000 software packages. Although I have not a clue where the pirates get the origional copies from at those prices, I mean some one somewhere had to actually buy the CD's before it could be pirated. So what happens? The very people and businesses who have to rely on the software, have it easy to use and maintain. For the software to be reliable, it is them that get bit in the Butt when a hardware key drops dead, or the license server goes into fits, or hours of paid labor have to go into installing and configuring the LC server or a whole host of other issues just because the developers are paranoid of someone stealing thier stuff. In the case of High end graphics software and 3D meshes I just can't figure out against whom they are trying to protect against? Who? The 15 year old computer geek wishing to crank out some Sci Fi Fan art? Is that what all this is about? Perhaps it is to protect against the underground porn producers! Yea that's it! A whole ton of money out there being made in animated 3D sex! Getting back to reality though, IMHO the main reason for all this security is aimed against undeveloped or impoverished countries,where even businesses would not have software if there were no pirated versions. Hey when your business is lucky to pull in 10K a year you can not afford to pay 5K for software and still be able to pay your employees. But that is a whole different animal involving governments, politics, corruption and greed. Again, I am not referencing MS XP, or any other gen purpose SW. That is a whole other issue. If indeed it is done to curb sales losses in places like china or bangladesh, well then that is idiotic unless you price your stuff so businesses in those countries can afford it. Or have thier governments tighten up thier anti piracy laws. Oops, I think we have stumbled on the real reason we have to put up with impossible protection schemes. Yhe dirty little secret,it is really all about foreign markets and market penetration in those markets. 3D graphical software is a relatively small community. I mean in the developed world there are not that many new Ad agencies and graphics houses starting up. The real place with any hope of market expansion is in developing countries. But then that is a whole other discussion.