WinRAR decided to have a one day free-for-all promotion, giving away license keys to anyone who was on thier mailing list. So obviously, if you were not on their mailing list you had no idea of the free giveaway.
With promotion expired, there is still a way to get this free key. Here’s the trick, they sent the same key to all 40,000 users that benefited from the promotion, and now that key is available for download from Simtel (one of WinRAR’s partners in this).
* Download the key: WinRAR Free Key 3.51
* Now download WinRAR version 3.51
* Install WinRAR 3.51, go to where you downloaded the key (rarkey.rar) and unpack it. You’ll get a rarreg.key that you’ll have to copy in Program Files-WinRAR (the installation folder for WinRAR). After that you should see Registered to “PCA Special Offer”