Blue Marble Geographics actively monitors known cracked keys and can remotely disable them if the software phones home. While they rarely sue individual users, companies using cracked GIS software face fines up to $150,000 per instance under the Copyright Act.
There is a completely free mobile version available for iOS and Android. This app allows for field data viewing, simple digitising, and GPS-based data collection without a license fee. global mapper 17 free
: Import up to 4 data files at a time to view their geometry and attributes. Blue Marble Geographics actively monitors known cracked keys