Which makes cracking groups crack the software again, and then Steinberg starts adding dongles and shit, the cycle continues. It's actually not the pirates responsible for the needless copy protection, it's the companies who think adding more and more "protection" solves the problem, when in fact the cracking groups just crack the software again. Also, a lot of DAWs are way too much fucking money, though I can understand with all the licensing stuff that goes on, though there's relatively cheap or free software with about the same functionality available. Also, certain software that doesn't suck avoids this whole cycle by just being inexpensive and awesome. Granted, of course it's still pirated, but there's enough revenue there to ensure that every update is amazing. Waveform drawing? New Linux version? Fuck yeah. Why doesn't Steinberg or Cakewalk work on shit like that instead of stroking their dongles?