The latest from VSL support, for the benefit of this thread:
"I understand your concern. It might help to think of your Vienna
Instruments products just like a real instrument. You have to restring
every guitar every once in a while, to keep it in good tune. Our
ViennaKeys have a warranty of two years, so you might want to consider
exchanging your key every two years, to prevent it from failing. If the
key breaks by itself within these two years, you'll get a new key and
new licenses for free!
Another option would be to insure you products at a local insurance company.
Regarding your request, I'm afraid that can't give you a positive answer
to exactly your proposition, sorry to say. But here's what I can do:
I can offer you the replacement licenses for only $10 per license (+ $10
handling fee) instead of the earlier mentioned $30 per license, if you
purchase new Single Instrument Downloads with the residue of $100 (about
EUR 72) that you would save by the lower price on the replacement
licenses. You can even combine this with our current lottery offer, so
maybe you're lucky and get an additional Single Instrument Download for
free!
So here's again how this would happen: you purchase additional Single
Instrument Downloads worth at least EUR 72 in our web shop, and you can
then purchase the replacement licenses for your broken key for $60
(incl. handling fee and shipping, if you haven't purchased a replacement
key yet - a replacement key ($36) is not included here).
I hope that you find this offer interesting."
I do find it interesting, and I'll have to think it through. By the way, I reccomend once this thread runs it's course, we make another that details everything we've found about vienna key loss and failure.