STLPilot's analogy of buying a piece of software, losing it and asking for a replacement is a bad one, as most companies will do exactly that. CD's and DVD's get damaged all the time, and any major software company has a replacement policy for this common issue.
Ikarus will do the EXACT same thing, you are confusing DAMAGE with LOSS. They are 2 different monsters. I mean you even said it yourself REPLACEMENT policy. Replacement means taking old and damaged and replacing it with new. I don't know any company that has a "loss" policy unless it's a cell phone and you have to pay a monthly fee for that. The reason that Ikarus needs their product back for replacement is because they will not get credit from their manufacturer IPACS. This means that Ikarus will be paying for the product he lost at the field. This is the same reason Best Buy and Comp USA have REPLACEMENT policies. If they don't have something to return to the vendor, they wind up paying the bill. Do you understand this now?
Also this cable is not just a dongle. There is software and hardware inside the cable. This is why these cables just can't be easily made, because they are not just simple dongles like you say. That's why nobody posted after GBoulton asked how he could make his own cable.
You also mentioned that Gboulton was being an "honest" customer. This is the same person who posted in these forums that he wanted information to manufacture his own cable knowing that RCU would give him a warning for posting what he said (which they did). I knew he was upset, but it still shows the integrity he had as an "honest" customer. The post was deleted from this forum by the moderators because it's against RCU policy to discuss cracking software which he knew was not allowed if you read the post. As far as I can see he made 1 post on RCU (sorry I missed the post), one phone call to Ikarus then decided to take matters into his own hands by trying to find out how to steal his own copy. Personally I would have done things just a tad differently, but that's just me.
In any case I have no control over it. If that's Ikarus' policy, then that's what I have to stand by and support. They get the policy handed to them from their headquarters. Once again I'm sorry he lost his cable, I really am, but losing something and something defective/damaged are very different.