The author of this article is not being honest with himself. It keeps talking about people buying TurboTax and then installing it on multiple computers in their own household.
But that's now how TurboTax was being used, it was being installed on one computer and then given to a friend or family member to use at their home and so on and so forth. I heard a quote from someone at Intuit that said in 2001 they sold 5 million copies of TurboTax. That's signifigant, but then he said there were 25 million tax returns submitted through their service using the software. So a 5 for 1 piracy rate.
So TurboTax might still have sold 5 million copies of TurboTax, but then that only resulted in 5 million tax returns. So there was an additional 20 million returns * the $15 filing fee that they missed out on. Maybe they sold 10 million copies, addressing part of the piracy problem. But again they lost out on 15 million filing fees.
So in addressing the piracy problem, they lost out on the revenue from the filing fees. That's the position that Taxcut takes with their software. If you buy the software the filing fee is free by rebate. But obviously if you don't buy it you don't get the rebate, so Taxcut still get's paid.
Anyway, maybe there is a lesson for Microsoft or Hollywood here, but it's not the lesson described in this article. This is an example of biased journalism. :(
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