Like the title says.

I live in a rural area where the only high speed internet is expensive and unreliable. I can't be the only one.

.

The same here. In fact I have a medium connection, but once the phone line was down for about 6 weeks caused by a minor storm and the mobile internet here is so poor! So I really like to be independent of the internet concerning music making.
 
Marc

Without it, in my opinion it's taking a step back from being a professional solution to something only hobbyist should be using...

Absolutely!

For a fee I will come to house and etch the 1's a 0's onto your hard drive. No internet connection needed.
 
That's a big fee, BTW.

Professionals don't use the internet? :)
Even if you have an objection to having a permanent connection nothing stopping you from having a temporary network connection available to a computer. A cheap wireless dongle or a network cable can do the trick for just when you need to do an update or activation. This is a far better solution than having hardware dongles like some software mandates.

Noel,
 
I think people are under the impression the connection is need to run CbB.

Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]
Professionals don't use the internet? :)
Even if you have an objection to having a permanent connection nothing stopping you from having a temporary network connection available to a computer. A cheap wireless dongle or a network cable can do the trick for just when you need to do an update or activation. This is a far better solution than having hardware dongles like some software mandates.

This is nonsense. You're talking about copy protection on a product that is being given away fro free. Why should it even enter the discussion. I'm staying with what I have and don't want to join up with yet another organization in order to use it. 
 
What happens if we don't want to be part of the collective and simply use what we paid for?
 

ampfixer
 
What happens if we don't want to be part of the collective and simply use what we paid for?
 

Then you have a decision to make. The activation process was part of the purchase. If you want to access the activation servers for you legacy products, you will need to have a BandLab account with the same e-mail address so they can migrate your data.