Music Piracy Endorsement

Douglas C. Merrill, former Google CIO and former EMI President of Digital Business, just gave a keynote speech at the CA Expo in Sydney, Australia, where he revealed that Limewire (R.I.P.) users were some of the biggest iTunes customers.

Merrill said that “going to sue customers for file sharing is like trying to sell soap by throwing dirt on your customers,” and that file sharing is less like theft than try-before-you-buy marketing that the music industry doesn’t even have to pay for.

Merrill thinks the RIAA needs to concentrate on making better music, instead of blaming “those dirty file-sharing guys.”