delvagus - Scenario 1: I buy a piano from Steinway for a lot of money. I do not insure it. While moving house the piano is lost. I contact Steinway and tell them I have lost the piano and ask for a replacement. They offer nothing other than confirmation of registration of my piano and its serial number. Scenario 2: I buy a piano from Steinway for a lot of money. I do insure it. While moving house the piano is lost. I contact my insurer, they investigate and I get the piano replaced. Scenario 3: I buy a piano from Steinway for a lot of money. I do not insure it. While moving house the piano is lost. I contact Steinway and tell them I have lost the piano and ask for a replacement. They offer to provide you with a new piano that is exactly the same for 50% of list price. If you are to argue that a physical piano that is mine is not the same kind of thing as a physical dongle that is mine, I disagree. Scenarios 1 and 2 are realistic. Scenario 3 would take an extremely charitable company. Personally I am surprised and grateful that Scenario 3 might be possible with VSL, should I be in such a situation the future.
That's not a proper analogy.A proper analogy would be: You buy a Steinway piano that is locked with a key and Steinway only gives you one key to unlock your piano. One day you lose your key or it is stolen, and now you can no longer use your piano. You contact Steinway and they tell you, "Sorry you lost your key. We'll send you a new key for half the price you paid for your piano!" If Steinway did that they would be out of business in days!
VSL needs to protect their software from piracy, but they also need to protect their customers. The best way to do this would be to have the dongle contact VSL every 60 - 90 days and the user enter a unique password to verify that they are the original purchaser. After the password is verified the dongle would be good for another 60 - 90 days. This could be optional as some people who only use their software in their own studio my see it as a hassle. But for someone that is out gigging or traveling with their VSL products this would be great.