My "joe job" is in software quality, so I don't believe it's right to used cracked versions of software. There's alot of DAW's out there that are reasonably priced. Heck I've seen some incredible things done with Garage Band and that's free with a Mac. I wish there was a free equivalent on PC, but between Reaper ($50 bucks for the non commercial license) and a lower end product like Mixcraft (which has tons of cool plugins right out of the box, plus unlimited audio and midi tracks), there are affordable options out there.
What I will say is it's rediculous products like ProTools which requires that security key dongle to run the program or Steinberg which requires another program be installed on your hard drive that's also a security key lockout. I much prefer the way Cakewalk does it where they provide the license key through the web page, and they trust you not to load it on your friends computer.
I will say the requirement for "one license per computer" is a bit rediculous. It would be better for a home user to have one licence per household. I have a desktop and a laptop that I both use in production and I think it's a bit much for someone like me who makes no money off their music, to be charges per licence per machine.
To me this is why Reaper is so popular. They make a good product and they charge a fair price. Personally Reaper isn't for me. I know some people love it and prefer it over the high priced DAW's, but I can certainly appreciate that they don't charge home users the same price they carge a professional studio.
