Degradation
Degradation happens once a year as new standards become mainstream. Support efforts really don't add anything new, they just tirelessly fix the major flaws to keep something in the market and this shows when things drop off the face of the planet. Even legal programs degrade - Microsoft Office 2000 is no longer good enough.

Patches
Given that they're going to see most people buy a new copy in a few years, Corps don't actually care about peolpe using Pirated programs getting their Patches. So long as you're in signal, and willing to risk the papertrail you can grab patches off their servers. Patching a Program requires you stop using it temporarily (unload it, or reboot the node) but also clears out Malware that's infected that program. If something has damaged the program then that damage is also fixed.

Going unpatched for a month applies a negative dicepool when making defensive or offensive rolls.

Running Multiple Copies
It's impossible to stop machines being able to copy data from one place to another. I mean, people have tried to stop it, but it's frankly impossible thanks to the very nature of computers and certain fundamental problems.

So, instead you can copy programs endlessly, but only one will ever run at a time. You're allowed to have a backup copy in case your Commlink gets shot into pieces by an angry barrens resident, but they can't run both at the same time. Incidentally, they need to communicate with a Corp server to okay this, so when your connection is being jammed, or otherwise prevented, you lose access to your programs.

Unrestricted
Whether it's an actual legal program that lets you do this, or it's a pirated, cracked copy of a program, these programs cost twice as much. The benefits of unrestricted programs are that they run without signal and you can run as many of them as you want at a time.

Piracy is more dangerous now that you have software companies that make their own laws. The actual cracker is liable to be shot in the head, or forced into debt slavery if they're caught. So, mostly they sell to small groups of people. Piracy is now quite expensive, since you need to have plants in companies that make these products, and also spend quite a bit of time working on a particular program. Security systems are now advanced enough that nobody except a dedicated team has any real chance of cracking important programs.

Licencing
A new option is to have a Licenced program - you pay the full normal cost upfront, but you also pay 10% of the original cost per copy that you're allowed to run (the player can just choose this, and change it with a call to their Licencor) per month. On the other hand, this program never degrades. You still need to patch monthly, but these patches also include feature enhancements that keep it current.

It's a business model. As per usual, lose signal and the programs stop working.

Software as a Service
Whilst some people would say that Licenced programs are evil enough, those in the know reserve their invective for Software as a Service. They say that depriving a person of control of the very bytecode of their programs is a grand travesty of the rights of man. Meanwhile most people use it and don't even realise what it is.

Software as a Service provides access to a program on a foreign machine. You gain all the benefits of having that program loaded so long as you can maintain this subscription. These programs never degrade, and never suffer from being unpatched. You pay 20% per month, but you can access it from extra machines at a cost of an additional 5% per month per extra machine.

As per usual, if you lose signal then you lose the subscription and the program stops working.