How would they know if you pirated it and used that in freelance work instead? They have a registration database. If they had reason to suspect that Joe's Freelance Graphics was using an illegal version, and checked their database and found that Joe's Freelance Graphics didn't have a licensed copy, they could investigate…
I had a couple of student versions of 3ds Max (6 and 7, I think?) and the books are huge. student licenses are for noncommercial work. While you could buy a student license and do freelancing with it, that is no more legal than if you just pirated the whole thing. Back when I was looking into it the conversions were about…
I know some freelancers who let anti- piracy agencies check on people who make offers that are dumping the general market price in the assumption that that person then usually uses pirated software because otherwise he would not be able to deliver it that cheap. Its not so nice but those guys hate people that destroy the…