EMI’s Ex-president Says File-Sharing Might Be OK

[DaBees-Knees]

http://www.p2pon.com/

Former chief operating officer of New Music and president of Digital Business at EMI Music Douglas Merrill has caused a lot of controversy in the media when he said that file-sharing is not such a bad thing after all.



Since Merrill was also chief information officer and vice president of engineering at Google, and now he is CEO of ZestCast, his words have considerable weight.

“There’s a set of data that shows that file sharing is actually good for artists. Not bad for artists. So maybe we shouldn’t be stopping it all the time,” Merrill said, as quoted by BoingBoing. “Obviously, there is piracy that is quite destructive but again I think the data shows that in some cases file sharing might be okay.”

At CA Expo in Sydney, Australia, Merrill talked about the rigid stance of the RIAA which was only blaming the ‘dirty file sharing guys’ for the music industry apparent collapse.

“Going to sue customers for file sharing is like trying to sell soap by throwing dirt on your customers,” Merrill pointed out. He went on saying something which was definitely very painful for the RIAA: “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.”
With these views, Merrill’s resignation from EMI in 2009 could only seem natural.

"Going to sue customers for file sharing is like trying to sell soap by throwing dirt on your customers"


I like his comparison.