So how I am missing all of the uproar and hissy fits over this. To be honest I didn't read all of the bantering and whatknot. It got tiring. You install Poser. You e-mail, snail mail, call, push a button on your internet. You get a number. Done. You get new drive, new computer, erase your drive. Repeat. Done again. Doesn't seem to be so much of a life threatening hardship to me. You get a new drive, new computer, erase your drive, then try to email, snail-mail, call, push a button. One of several things will happen: 1a) They give you a number without any problem. Which sort of defeats the purpose of said protection. What good is a lock if you hand out keys to everyone if they just ask? 1b) They give you a number after verifying that you aren't merely trying to get a number to install illegally on another machine, or you've stolen it. And how are they going to do this without becoming annoying to the legitimate user? 2) You can't get the number for installation because they've gone out of business and, promises to the contrary, no one is around to supply new activation codes. That's why people are upset.