Putting Napster to use: Between a community and a body of customers – the construction and regulation of a sociotechnical group

Abstract

Napster, a horizontal setup for exchanging music files, is exemplary of an open sociotechnical system and subject to contradictory interpretations. Two major explanations about how innovation works therein are examined. The first presents Napster as a self-regulated community with a new type of social regulation based on gift-giving whereas the second analyses it as a means of consumption, where opportunistic calculations and behaviours prevail and which is heralding in structures for an on-line music market. Empirical observations of the origins and uses of this system reveal that these interpretations mask the technical dimension and overestimate the user’s ability to make rational calculations and moral judgments. Regulating this sociotechnical group depends more on “technical solidarity”, wherein users’ moral actions and calculations cope with the more or less restrictive but fragmented levels in the technical system.