Mark, you don’t sound sarcastic at all; you are trying to solve the problem and help gain a decent userbase for a great product with a broken copy protection system.
But no, carrying around any physical device of any size that can be broken, lost, or forgotten to make software work was not acceptable in 2007, much less today. This is not about money. I have purchased two separate licenses for Sibelius so that I can get the concurrent installs I need to be productive at home, at work, on the road, or on my music laptop. This is about being able to be productive at home, at work, on the road, or on my music laptop. I cannot guarantee a small device in my pocket won’t be broken, lost, or forgotten, especially while there are other viable, if less-ideal choices. Is it hard to clip a small metal clip to your keychain and carry it around every day? Of course not. Is it smart to trust your reputation as a musician to a small electronic device clipped to your keychain, that if broken, lost, or damaged would prevent you from working until you get it replaced? Of course not.
I have created several technology startups from my lab. This is truly not a difficult problem to solve effectively as so many other software companies have with transferable licenses (the ones I have personally used are Adobe Creative Suite, Solidworks, Ansysis, Fluent, Matlab, Mathematica, and of course, Sibelius; I’m sure there are many others), and I don’t think the Steinberg’s executives are aware of how much this antiquated choice of copy protection is hurting their sales.
It just hurts, as a gigging musician and with my day job as a professor of electrical engineering, to see a technically superior product hurt through poor marketing decisions. The Betamax story is seen too often these days. I’m not going to convince anyone here, but I’ll keep my license, hoping that some day the policy will change.