Yep, you got to have to hardware, it's digi's little security feature and seems to work pretty nicely. Don't bother trying to find a way around it or checking other forums cause you won't find a way. I had a buddy that ran cubase and saw my pro tools windows disks and asked if he could have them. I told him it wouldn't work but sure. He left swearing he "knew a guy." After a few days he called to tell me my disks were "bunk". It does make it a pain when you want to haul your rig with you to do edits and stuff but I understand where they're coming from.