Cracking is about removing anti-features, typically copy protections.
It pairs well with pirating, but neither one strictly requires the other.
Anti what features? Piracy?
Like parent says, cracking and piracy pair well, but I've had to do it many times just for compatibility reasons, on software I had purchased.
All perfectly understandable to me. But from the perspective of the people designing the anti-something system, wouldn't they call it piracy?
We can argue if piracy is a charitable enough name for bypassing copyright protections but that's irrelevant in terms of whether or not that is the thing the software provider is trying to do.