The pirated software thing is always a taboo area. However it is rumoured that a certain large CAD package got it's position by releasing cracks themself,
Or the security built in was pap, beyond pap, and all products from that co, used a similar version, so when the algorithm got cracked, slight adjustments allowed you to crack all there products.

Although, Sky, virgin and the old ITV pay tv, had an all out war a few years back, sky cracked itvs codes and released them online, ( it sunk them, ) so the old employees released cracks for virgin and sky ( both same-ish ). So everyone had free modems and tv for years.

Mach, on the other hand, is different, its the Chinees sending out cracked software, Machs a cheep bit pf software and is not be worth the time to crack individually. the hacked versions look like they have some strange added code.

Lesson to be learnt, your opening yourself up to a lot worse trouble than being done for unlicensed software by installing cracked software. I know this from experience trying to track down a bug in mach a few years ago, and finding out the CHI had added code on top of the crack.

on the main topic, and had been through a full force tax audit a few years ago ( turn up at house and business, ceased books and pc's ). i found them to be very reasonable, as long as your not taking the mikle.