"We have already publicly stated several times that we will offer a free update with the then-current Pro Pack Service Release that will remove the security system." -worth a re-run- Hate to say it, but that statement is still an empty promise. Think about it...what is "cease to exist" and who determines that it happened? Let's say that Curious Labs lays off 24 people and all that's left is the owner, has it gone under? The owner will certainly want to try to sell it and if a "free update" was released the value of the program would have greatly diminished. Okay, you wait 1 month, then 2. Your hard drive dies, your computer dies, and you get a new one. You can't contact anyone to get a new registration number (yeah, the owner is going to hang around answering phones). How long do we wait for the owner to decide that the program cannot be sold? Another scenerio. Let's say for the sake of argument that another MetaC program ... Painter3D has "ceased to exist". If there had been a similar arrangement back then who would be responsible for providing the "free update", MetaC, Curious, Adobe? If an employee of any one of those did it they would find themselves in court and possibly jail. So when CL goes out who's going to do it? (by the way, in my view there are two kinds of businesses, those out of business and those that are going that way ... however, slowly (e.g. Pan American Airlines, Montgomery Ward, Commodore...) If the "free update" was put "in escrow" with some lawyer with specific instructions that the Poser community understood about what would have to happen to have the "free update" released, well then maybe you could trust that it would occur.