I can offer the Newbie DIY'er perspective, based on my following the thread in the URC area. I won't assign motives for any of the stakeholders (URC, CI's, AD's, DIYers), as this simply stirs the pot and leads to finger pointing and p***ing contests.

In summary, URC surprised everyone by not making Live Updates available to the entire world, only to dealers registered with their website, or Authorized Dealers. This affected everyone, including DIY'ers who owned the hardware/software previous to this policy. They can no longer get Live Updates directly from URC's website - they need authorization or some type of password from the new gatekeepers.

This policy did not grandfather users of URC MXEditor software prior to implementation.

After a few weeks of online bickering, URC put up the latest MXEditor program that anyone with a valid serial number can download, with the Live Update feature disabled.

Here is the category of stakeholders and a summary of the issues:
1) CI's - they now need to provide access to the official, live updatable software to all their customers, past and present.
2) Authorized Dealers - they also need to provide access to the software, but a lot of them may not know about the new policy or their new responsiblity to their customers, past and present
3) DIY'ers who purchased from CI's still in business - they get to reconnect to their CI service provider, shouldn't have an impact
4) DIY'ers who purchased from CI's who are no longer in business - they need to find some way to get access to the updatable software, now that their gatekeeper is out of business
5) DIY'ers who purchased from AD's who aren't aware of the policy, or how to get the updatable software - bureacracy at its worst; someone up the corporate food chain of these AD's need to create a process for providing the software
6) DIY'ers who purchased from non-AD's, but who have serial numbers on their components - need to go directly to URC and get the non-updatable software
7) DIY'ers who purchased from non-AD's who stripped the serial numbers from the components - can't legally get software from anywhere

The biggest source of noise on the discussion board appears to be people who purchased from eBay, buy.com, Amazon, etc. who can only access the non-updatable version of the software. It APPEARS that URC may provide new software online (non-updatable versions) for grey market buyers. It would make sense - the DIY'er would need to enter the serial number and download the new software manually - no live update.

There doesn't appear to be much sympathy for eBay purchasers who had the serial numbers lifted from their components, although there are eBay stores mailing the software to people on request. The legality of is questionable.

My conclusion? If you want the software, you'll get it;

A) CI supplied dealers are the real winners in this - get to reconnect with customers
B) Commercial AD's - They will eventually need to add to their bureacracy and create a new process for their customers to get a working product, or they will have a lot of upset customers. Actually, they already do.
C) Non-AD's - Don't know if they know or really care, but I bet they'll either become AD's or give up the line of hardware eventually
D) eBay stores - won't affect them much - they'll compensate. There are plenty of bootleg versions of the updatable software already out there
E) Non-professional DIY end users - have the most amount of work ahead of them finding the software. Simple if you have a serial number, a bit more work to find the bootleg versions.