C'mon folks lets not drag this thread down into a slanging match.

The issue of approach to protection is an interesting and worthwhile discussion worthy of a thread in its own right (after all it appears to the outside to be a discussion on network cards rather than copy protection).

My view on the situation is this

a) the original poster wants to prevent people from simply handing out an installation CD or iso of his retail product and letting other people install freely without any kind of barrier at all. A totally legitimate concern

b) while it is certainly possible for people who know what they are doing to circumvent any protection method by replacing the relevant code in your program, this is only achievable by people with the right technical knowledge, and only worthwhile doing for programs with a high potential user base. Hackers tend to focus their efforts on mass-market software and not niche products

c) any hardware-based control needs to rely on either an irreplacable component of a machine such as motherboard, or an approach that allows for the user occasionally changing components

d) restricting a user to one copy on one machine per license is perfectly reasonable. Most software works on that basis - I'm pretty sure that Microsoft wouldn't allow me to install my license of Vista on a desktop as well as my laptop

e) putting in place some kind of webservice call or online login to validate the user every time the program is run depends totally on people living in a connected 24/7 world. Certainly not an assumption that I can make for users of my software, and if there is no inherent internet/server requirement for the software for any other reason it means implementing and maintaining infrastructure that would probably cost more than the lost revenue from piracy!