The truth record companies don’t want to hear – pirates are biggest iTunes customers

When it comes to demonizing no-one holds a candle to the record labels and their constant assertion that pirates are the worst scum on the planet and they are costing the industry boatloads of money.

This attitude has been laughed at for some time by anyone who really understands how our new media distribution system works but you have to admit that when someone of former Google CIO and EMI executive Douglas C Merrill stature says that this whole pirate thing is crap you might want to listen.

At a recent keynote speech in Sydney, Australia, Merrill had some rather interesting things to say about pirates and the music industry.

At EMI he took up the impressive position of Chief Operating Officer of New Music and President of Digital Business, despite admitting this week that he knew the music industry was “collapsing”.

“The RIAA said it isn’t that we are making bad music, but the ‘dirty file sharing guys’ are the problem,” he said during his speech as quoted by ComputerWorld.

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

But those “dirty file-sharing guys” had an even dirtier secret. During his stint at EMI, Merrill profiled the behavior of LimeWire users and discovered something rather interesting. Those same file-sharing “thieves” were also iTunes’ biggest spenders.

via TorrentFreak

It was this kind of talk, which Merrill expressed publicly while at EMI that ended up getting him tossed from the company.