Napster users between community and clientele: The formation and regulation of a sociotechnical group

Napster, a peer-to-peer setup for exchanging music files, was exemplary of an open sociotechnical system. Two major, contradictory explanations of this innovation are examined. The first presents Napster as a self-regulated community with a new type of exchanges based on cooperation and gift-giving. The second analyzes it as a means of consumption, where opportunistic calculations and behaviors prevailed and which was heralding in an online music market. Empirical observations of the origins and uses of Napster 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 depended on “technical solidarity” wherein users' moral actions and calculations coped with a fragmented technical system.