Josh, Thanks for your comments - I am trying very hard to not shoot from the hip and just present information which is true (or my honest opinion of the situation). The questions are the main ones which continue to come up and I have never seen a answer for, and nor does anyone at CL seem to want to answer. And while these questions stay unanswered I will continue to be a active voice against their new protection scheme. IF CL come back with a Legal document which states they will protect their members if they go bankrupt - and a way to protect their none Internet cliental from having to jump through hoops, I will back off. I don't believe in forced registration, and I will continue to fight against this type of thing, but my issue here is about those people who could and might get screwed by this protection scheme. Yes warez is out there - and I feel for any company trying to battle against this. As a budding programmer myself (and moving into Internet Programming for Webpages) I totally understand the issues arond copyright and warez. However... ANY software or hardware protection that causes the user problems, or could present problems to the final-user is a FAILED copyprotection! Warez does your company harm... upsetting your client base puts your company out of business. Word of mouth is a powerful tool, and like most people - they are more likely to attack the software for its faults before praise it for its glory... Personally - if they presented a hardware dongle version in which you could use the hardware dongle - I would spend the extra amount of money for piece of mind and security. I personally would rather see a Safedisc type protection on the CD which would prevent most amatuer copies from being made (ie - a 1 to 1 copy on Safedisc Ver 2 is pretty hard to pull off - though again it can be). Personally I never know if I will loose internet tomorrow - or if the worst happens and my harddrive just stops working... remember everyone - a hard drive only has a estimate of 3 years before it can start faulting. In the last two years I have changed my harddrives at least 8 times - mainly because I have needed more harddrive space. Poser 4 has been on three different harddrives in my computer over the last year, mainly because I change the way I lay out things. Again - does my activation need to be sent in everytime I reinstall on a differen't harddrive? Who knows - CL arn't answering :P At least with a hardware dongle you are protected from reactivation, and from CL going Bankrupt. No matter where you use it - that dongle means it will be activated. Even a CD dongle protects you - which is why most games are only using Activation keys for online playing, and not for their main software... But again remember there are ways around hardware Dongles just as easy as the activation code method also. And there are a number of other types of copy protection out there - including and not limited to Serial Number protection on their website, so that if you go to download SP1 you need to include your serial number (this usually stops a lot of people because they are too scared of being caught :P). You could use a security system which has false checks, which causes most warez people to give up after the third or forth false security check (I believe it is MacroMedia or one of those companies who used that). Or you can do what may companies do and produce a avid community from your own homesite, which only benefits those who have bought the software (serial number, and activation code can be checked) which forces people to buy their software to take advantage of their community. Prime example of this is Macromedia, and certain smaller companies making shareware. I don't know all the protections and schemes - but ANY of the ones above would have given just as much protection as the Activation Code scheme - and wouldn't have pissed off people like me :) And now my hardline view on registeration: The thing is - I don't think CL will change their minds about this protection scheme. Each company wants a client base, each company wants to know where their software is going, and each company wants people to register. This software protection isn't protection - more a means to force people to register their software and present CL with a client database. And one has to ask why? Why is it that important that you know my address? Why is it that important you know my full name? Why is it that important that you know my phone number? I could shoot from the hip here and give some of my own reasons I believe these are important - however I will leave the speculation up to you people :) WiNC