stealth... kudos to you for caring so much... this friend of your suffered a huge loss & you have a first class rant going because you genuinely feel bad for him & I don't fault you for that... but your logic is skewed & your rationalizing is anything but rational.
The more you go on & on about his license, or his owning it, or this or that, the more you sound like you're grasping at straws & don't understand the situation.
He got ripped off!! ...that sucks, because his stuff is now somebody else's stuff.. nobody like when that happens, but it happens every day.
Software manufacturers get ripped off too... every day.. so they have taken steps to protect themselves, just as we need to. Your friend didn't, and now some guy out there has the keys to his property... or more accurately the keys to unlock some privileges he has acquired a license to unlock...
...& SAi charges a lot for those keys, because once you have the key, you have access to the goods...
You friend got burned by the guy who swiped his property, not by SAi.
No two ways about it... There has NEVER been any indication from anyone anywhere that you can have a new dongle if it disappears.
If you break it, then nobody else is opening up your $4500 property, so you can turn in the broken one & at least have some recouse for a new one... but when it's gone... it's just like leaving jewelry laying around.. it ain't the jewelers fault...