Quote Originally Posted by The Adventurer View Post
Companies are generally smart enough to have multiple server locations for just this reason. That's what the 'cloud' is all about. Data isn't stored in one place. Its spread out, duplicated, redundancies on redundancies. It can't be disrupted easily.
What happens when the company decides years later that it's no longer worth keeping the servers running? That's what happened with Adobe CS2, they decided it wasn't worth keeping the activation server running so they shut it down. Plenty of people were complaining that they couldn't reinstall their copies of CS2 so Adobe did the right thing and basically released it for free, they made available a version that doesn't require online activation and provided everyone a new serial number. That doesn't mean other companies will release their products for free if they take down the servers, you could just be out of luck.