Remember Douglas Merrill? He’s the exec that EMI poached from Google in 2008 to be its worldwide president of digital, but who left the company a year later. Now, in his role as CEO of a company called ZestCash, he’s been talking about his experiences about the “collapsing” music industry. “The RIAA said it isn’t that we are making bad music, but the `dirty file sharing guys’ are the problem. Going to sue customers for file sharing is like trying to sell soap by throwing dirt on your customers.” Merrill also said that he compared usage of P2P service LimeWire with iTunes sales, and found that the biggest filesharers were also the biggest iTunes purchasers. “That’s not theft, that’s try-before-you-buy marketing and we weren’t even paying for it… so it makes sense to sue them,” said Merrill – yes, that last comment is sarcastic. Source: Computerworld
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