I think essentially there are a core of honest paying customers like most of us here.
Maybe what Oleg/1C should do is allow us to register for SOW, which allows us to download the sim, and supply us with an enabling Key (via email or other means). This we can save onto a CD/DVD.
When playing online the server can do a quick authentication check - where it will recognise 'known' (good) customers via a PGP method.
Note that this is not the same as steam where you have to login to steam first before you play.
The pros and cons ar 50/50, but the objective should be for the ease of the good customer, as you are going to get pirates (even with steam) and it can be a community effort to 'disable' these pirates.
__________________
|