How many of our wonderful skinners, and renderers do you think really _paid_ for Photoshop and 3DS Max (and VRay / Brazil)? I'm pretty sure you could probably use at most, both hands to count them.
I looked at the download numbers for some of my free programs I've written. LFS Player Hacker has been downloaded over 24,000 times. If I'd sold that for £1 a pop, do you think I'd have made £24k? very unlikely.. _maybe_ £50.. the rest would have shared it around / cracked it or simply not bothered.. 1 less person using a cracked piece of software doesn't equal one more legit purchase, by any stretch of the imagination.
If you write software for a living, you learn to understand this.. as the devs have done I'm sure. You can't prevent it (anyone really believing you can is simply delusional), but if you accept that it's going to happen and you do what you feel is adequate in making it harder for Joe SixPack to do it, then you're likely to have a few more strands of hair at a later point in life than if you stressed and fretted about every person that might be using a hookey copy of your software.
The devs themselves are obviously happy with the legit:cracked ratio (OK, maybe not _happy_ per-se, but understand and can tolerate it) else there would be other measures in place or they would pack up their bags and go home.
If you make software protection _too_ complex, then it's only the legitimate users who will suffer.. this has been proven multiple times with big houses / publishers, like Ubisoft etc.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not condoning any of it.. but unless you have a vested financial interest in LFS itself, I really wouldn't continue losing sleep over it.
Cheers..
Ian