How do companies know if I use cracked software or assets for my personal gig?

Chances of getting caught are next to nothing.

If you do get caught, you’re fucked. Like fucked. The legal headaches and costs going up against Adobe or MS will ruin you… forever.

With that said, pirating tools is one thing, but using other people’s loops or artistic work without approval is another matter altogether. And that kind of stuff will land you into all kinds of trouble, not to mention curb your work as talk will quickly get around in the community.

If you’re serious about becoming a musician or artist or a creative selling their work, reputation and community standing is like 90% of it.

And if you’re wondering how can an artist tell? We know our work. And people talk. Share stuff. Sooner or later, it’ll get around. The internet is still powered by people.

Most of those use cases are untraceable.

But there's some things you shouldn't pirate. I was a freelance developer for a company. They hired another set of freelancers who used stock photos and music, but didn't have the proper licenses. Had legal papers sent their way.

I learned about it because the company started demanding I provide all the proper licensing of my code and the libs I used. I have no idea what the details are or what happened. But they were pretty freaked out.

How about using open source alternatives? Like Gimp or Inkscape?

I'd also encourage you to look into FOSS alternatives but I have a friend who's a graphic designer and he's been pirating the crap out of Adobe since he began his studies in the early 2000s. He says neither he nor any of his collagues (all freelancers) ever had a problem with pirated software. It's literally unheard of. And if you think about it, how is Adobe gonna find out if you block their phoning home with a firewall? Printers don't give a damn (and couldn't tell), neither can clients or random people on the internet. No one is ever going to be "Nice work but can you quickly somehow proof to me that you actually have the ridiculously overpriced subscription for that barely functioning design suite eveyone uses because there's no alternative (except for Affinity maybe)?"

The moment you start selling things, you transition from "a sternly worded letter" to a lawsuit with insane damages claims.

To break that down:

• Software: Generally speaking, MS/Adobe will probably just assume but won't care if you are a small enough fry. And in a patreon context, you are probably fine as far as customers. But for "real" gig work, you might get asked to sign a document saying you are legit. At one of my old companies we would generally have contractors sign a legal document saying that they were legit so that we have a paper trail to blame it all on them.
• Assets: One, people can generally smell an asshole from a mile away. But if you must steal the work of others and sell it as your own, be aware that the same tools used for DMCA takedowns on youtube and twitch (computer vision to detect copyrighted images, audio analysis for songs, etc) work here too. And while I have no idea what handsome devil is doing it, there are tools to scrape the various crowdfunding sites since patreon and the like tend to be cool about taking stuff down. So good luck advertising that.

As for what you can do to minimize your risk and not be a piece of shit?

• Open source equivalents of software. If you want a "real job" you are going to need to learn and use adobe. But there is a lot of value in knowing a few different tools and getting started with an open source or cheaper workflow is a great idea. Check Humble Bundle for the latter since they tend to sell the B/C tier stuff for cheap every few months
• Royalty Free assets. Check the licensing terms but these are usually pay once assets that you can then use until the end of time and even resell. Hell, a lot are completely free.

And, because it was suggested below

• Use pirated software but pretend it is open source: Like it or not, the gap between something like gimp and photoshop is massive. There is a reason that adobe have a stranglehold on "art" related fields and that is because they put the work in. And a lot of their tools are VERY distinctive to people who understand those workflows. Which, combined with being the kind of asshole who steals the work of real artists to sell on your own, is a good recipe to "get called out" by someone tipping off their buddy at Adobe.

Adobe and Microsoft only kinda care about you. You’re one person. All the freelancers out there are still a fairly small part of their respective balance sheets. If you’re a freelance worker, some of your customers might require you to show valid licenses for the software you use, because they want to make sure their partners are ethical (at least, in this regard). Alternatively, you could use FOSS apps.

As someone else already said, if you are making money using commercial software, you really should be paying for it. The cost of your software should be factored into what you charge your customers. They should understand that.

most of the applications 'phone home', often constantly after installation. often, source files will include a serial number embedded in metadata in source projects, that can be traces to a license.

there are many methods, but if you protect yourself (air gapped equipment) and cleanse your output you should be ok. that said, there are new techniques out/on the horizon with embedded data that would not be removable.

I've been working on a computer with pirated software for almost two decades. Graphic design, video,... There is no way anyone could know our care.

If you are so concerned, why not use alternatives

I just read about Solidworks. Don't pirate that, it still contacts home and gives them all the info it can pull from your pc: ip, your name, company info, etc. and then they send you a huge bill for the costs of 5 years or so of licensing. Also don't have an illegal copy next to a legal one, because then the legal one will detect the illegal one and send the info. Or open projects created with pirated software with a legal version.

Of course this data snooping would be illegal in the EU, but outside that I would be careful.

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Idgaf about pirating huge corpos stuff. Thats always moral. But don't steal SFX and the like, theres just too much of it for free.

If you earn/get big enough to care about it, then you would in the first place. Most software piracy busting methods revolves around existence of a snitch who knows you're pirating. You definitely can get away with it if you're just pirating it yourself, but a corporation with like 100 workers cannot do it when all it takes is one person to get busted.

On sound effects / samples it depends on how many people see it, so you don't need to worry too much unless you get popular similarly.

In general they wont. The way they usually find out with small businesses is disgruntled former employees snitching (some actually offer a reward for this).

They don't. But if you get big and along the way in a throwaway comment on Patreon mentioned you use the Adobe Suite and other tools they'll look into that and if you don't pay they'll send a very stern letter demanding payment.

Generally for Joe Schmo if they're found out it stops at a letter demanding payment, and if you don't pay it likely won't escalate, especially if you deny the accusation. But for someone making a profit they'll get their money and it's a major headache and just not worth it considering you are making money far exceeding the rather small cost.

Adobe genuine service I guess. Use something like simplewall or postmaster to block them from accessing the internet or block them via the built-in firewall.

Edit: Giving away exported content is fine but be careful with the project files. They can't figure out in what software and image or video was made in as long as you check the metadata. But project files can probably give you away.

For assets, you would be distributing other people’s work without permission. Some companies scan online content for digital fingerprints of copyrighted material. Think Youtube content ID but they are other tools out there.

As for software you used without a license, the work you did doesn’t matter in that regard, you’re only liable for using unlicensed software by bypassing copyright protection methods. You’re not distributing it. Their DRM (even cracked) might send them enough identifiable information to sue you (in theory).

In theory, some busybody would have to report you for it.

It's encoded into the file itself which license you have

Your clients might be performing due diligence and ask you for copies of your licenses. Especially if they're in a jurisdiction that's more litigious than others

Instead of Photoshop, use GIMP. Instead of Premiere, use Da Vinci Resolve. Instead of After Effects, use Blender. Instead of Audtion, use Audacity.