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THE
ANTHROPOLOGY OF FILE SHARING: CONSUMING NAPSTER AS A GIFT
“The real is produced from miniaturized cells,
matrices, and memory banks, models of control - and it can be
reproduced an indefinite number of times from these. It no longer
needs to be rational, because it no longer measures itself against
an ideal.” Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra &
Simulation
Napster.com is the premiere example of an information exchange
technology referred to as peer-to-peer file sharing. Aggregating
more than 10 million users in six months and attaining a growth
rate of 200.000 new subscribers in a single day, Napster became
the noisy center of a new social reality that struck terror into
even the most sturdy of music entertainment executives. Behind
this threatening new reality stands a software combining the convergence
of mp3 music files with an Internet relay chat feature. Together,
they enabled not only community, but free access to and download
of a up to 2 million copyrighted songs archived on the private
hard drives of 60 million subscribers world-wide.
Based on peer-to-peer music-sharing using a particular software
format, Napster presents a transferable site of an online subculture
of consumption acknowledging Schouten's and McAlexander's (1995)
definition as "a distinct subgroup of society that self-selects
on the basis of a shared commitment to a particular product class,
brand, or consumption activity." In fact, Napster's file
sharing system suggests the creation of a complex and contradictory
subculture of consumption challenging the interrelations between
technology, culture and consumption. In his study of the surfing
subculture, Irwin (1973) proposes that a subculture of consumption
exhibits a life cycle consisting of four stages: articulation,
expansion, corruption, and decline. Northeastern University's
first year student Shawn Fanning invented Napster in 1999 because
of "frustration not only with MP3.com, Lycos, and Scour.net,
but also to create a music community" (articulation stage).
In order to prevent further damage to signed artists, Napster
was sued by America's Recording Industry Association (RIAA) in
August 1999 and finally forced to stop the sharing of copyrighted
material after a preliminary injunction plus a lawsuit marathon
in March 2001 (corruption stage). Although the principle of file
sharing has irretrievably penetrated into current cyberspace consumption
culture, Napster itself seems destined to resemble an abandoned
beehive in the very near future.
Napster's decline from the bad boy to the toothless tiger seems
preordained. Yet its "outlaw mystique" hearkens back
to the later Jean Baudrillard and society's transformation into
hyperreality (Baudrillard 1981 and 1988). Following Baudrillard
virtuality retranscribes everything in its space as a "satellisation
of the real." "That which was previously mentally projected,
which was lived as a metaphor in the terrestrial habit is from
now on projected entirely without metaphor into the absolute space
of simulation," writes Baudrillard (1988), making the computer
screen a "depthless surface" of representation. In this
reversed image the Internet offers a virtuality which resists
our attempts to totalize it as a world, presenting instead loci
for playing with the assumptions that we have taken for granted
in modernity: community, information, liberation and self. Napster's
subculture of consumption entails a correlative transformation
in human relations contrasting mainstream society, and it is these
new relations that become the relations of Napster consumption
waiting to be interpreted.
Over the past decade, qualitative consumer research has broadened
its domain of inquiry to incorporate different cyberspace consumption
phenomena. An increasingly diverse set of research methods has
been developed, including socio-cognitive analysis (Granitz and
Ward 1996) and netnographic analysis (Sherry and Kozinets 2000).
Finally, a lot of research energy has been devoted to the analysis
of online gatherings including e.g. Turkle's (1995) immersion
into "Life on the Screen", Tambyah's (1996) treatment
on self and community online, McMellon's et al. (1997) analysis
of cyber seniors, Kozinets' (1997) netnographies of the X-Philes
and Star Trek fan subcultures or Okleshen's (1998) analysis of
Usenet groups, to name just a few. However, our understanding
of the ideological and consumption practices of online communities
consuming file sharing has yet to be informed.
This article has two objectives. First it presents a netnographic
analysis of one file sharing community, Napster, operationalized
as the totality of people using the Napster software to exchange
mp3 files. Secondly, it argues in favor of a new form of gift
giving in networks having precedence here as a powerful analytic
category for understanding the objects and consumption meanings
within Napster and other file sharing communities. We begin with
a methodological description of the project and then discuss our
findings in terms of two major concerns: (1) the structure of
Napster as a gifting economy and (2) its motivation understood
as the underlying values and their expression and maintenance.
METHOD
Following Kozinets (1997), netnography presents "a fusion
of established and innovative ethnographic techniques adapted
to the naturalistic study of virtual communities, and their research
representation" striving for the profound experiencing of
digital sociality (Sherry and Kozinets 2000) and enabling immersion
into Napster's virtual consumption cortex. Terms and conditions
of data gathering evoked by this netnographic research are given
further account in the following section.
Data
and Analysis
The data used in this study was gathered by the authors throughout
a period from October 2000 until February 2001 and includes cyber-interviews,
emails, board postings, homepages, functional and historical writings
as well as the authors' own observations using Napster.com. All
data was electronically catalogued and stored. As was suggested
in previous research (Kozinets 1997) all informants' names were
changed in order to guarantee confidentiality. In addition, informants'
permission for direct quoting in this paper was explicitly sought
by email resulting in participants' unanimous agreement.
Cyber Interviews. A primary data set is used including 40 cyber
interviews virtually recorded on Napster's Instant Messaging System
documenting the normative expectations of behavior and the ideology
attending the consumption of Napster.com. In order to find potential
informants the authors occasionally entered Napster's instant
messaging system as ordinary subscribers "knocking on other
online subscribers' doors" projectively tasking potential
informers for a "friendly talk about Napster" in service
of an in situ, conversational semi-directive individual interview.
Contacting potential informants, contacting the authors by informants
and meeting was perceived to be simpler than in meatspace. In
order to attract potential informants' attention an intrication
homepage (Kozinets 1995) presenting research questions and offering
ways to contact the authors was used (http://www.napsterresearch.com).
Though facing financial restrictions in accessing technology and
information (Dougan 1997) integration and participation are simplified
due to the participatory egalitarian ethics of the Internet originating
in its early ARPANET days (Castells 1996) and anonymity (Slevin
2000). Conducting interviews and analysis were done in tandem.
Interviews were commented upon and comments and interviews were
again read and commented upon at a distance. In the familiar iterative
process of grounded theory formation, analysis and data were integrated
with each other before being presented for member check feedback
by informants whose email addresses had been provided. This was
done in order to achieve maximum trustworthiness, representativeness
and informed consent (Lincoln and Guba 1985).
The cyber interviews represent both the richest and most sensitive
set of data and are given interpretive primacy in this study.
However, the broad and structured, participative, observational
and interview procedures of ethnographic research in face-to-face
situations (for an account see, e.g., Belk, Sherry and Wallendorf
1988; Fetterman 1989; Hammersley and Atkinson 1995; Hirschman
1986; Jorgensen 1989; Lincoln and Guba 1985) are uniquely inflected
in cyberspace due to the somewhat "textual" reality
of computer-mediated-communication (e.g., Williams et al. 1988;
Rice 1990, 1992). While overcoming the spatial and temporal boundaries
of meatspace new boundaries arise in cyberspace constraining and
extending (1) the nature and degree of social representation,
(2) integration and participation, and (3) accessibility of social
information of available data (Kozinets 1997) within our netnographic
study. Hence simulation of or self-fragmentation to, a higher
or lower social status, age, gender or language gestus (Reid 1991;
Hall 1992; Stone 1992; Witmer 1997; Smith and Kollock 1998) were
commonplace. This "reconstruction" (Turkle 1995) or
"refashioning" (Gergen 1991) of self in postmodernity
draws special implications for netnographic inquiry: cyber interviews
not only comment on how things are remembered by informants (Thompson,
Locander and Pollio 1989) in terms of a perspective of action
(Gould et al. 1974) but how things are actively constructed (Firat
and Venkatesh 1995) suggesting researcher's increasing acknowledgement
of a perspective of simulation.
Additional data. (1) Information on 35 emails, 56 homepages as
well as 40 entries on a number of online message boards were gathered
serving as a second experiential channel adding to our analysis
the observational part as a supplementary to participation, as
was suggested by Tedlock (1991). This observational data was read
approximately five times and reviewed. Although being recommended
by Lincoln and Guba (1985) we did this without authors' feedback
due to the somewhat escalating size and variety of data combined
with the impossibility to trace every author ex post. (2) A third
experiential channel was carved out by the authors including basic
economic and legal information on Napster.com and its direct environment
with respect to the last two years since its foundation in 1999.
(3) In order to provide firsthand immersion in the phenomenon
gathering and "close reading" (Sherry and Carmago 1987)
of data as a text also concerned our own embedded existence as
Napster consumers during the last two years. Embeddedness is crucial
in that it increased our acuity as the pre-eminent instrument
of research (Murray 1943) while both exalting and harnessing our
own idiosyncrasies (Sherry and Kozinets 2000).
STRUCTURE
At its core, Napster's software combines the convergence of mp3
music files with an Internet relay chat. Although forms of textual
communication between members are inherent to the system and also
possible on Napster's website message boards, Napster's primary
function is the sharing of mp3 files. Each member's computer functions
as a node presenting a certain amount of mp3 files which can be
accessed and copied to any other member's computers. This principle
suggests the mp3 transaction to be classified as a gift transaction
between donor and recipient. However, it is one that requires
some technical broadening that acknowledges four important consequences
of digitized information in digital networks. First, a gift is
always a perfect copy of an mp3 file stored on the donor's hard
drive. Second, a donor is usually a recipient and a recipient
is usually a donor at the same time but not to each other. Third,
it is the recipient and not the donor who initiates a gift transaction.
Fourth, donor and recipient are anonymous and gift exchange is
usually not reciprocal. "Jeff's" (connected via cable,
sharing 352 files) comment, however, hints at yet another form
of reciprocity:
Actually I'm one of [60] millions of anonymous people accidentally
spread all over the globe but involved in the same thing - sharing.
I'm part of a community to which I contribute with my stuff and
which showers me with music in return.
A different form of reciprocity occurs introducing the third
"virtual exchange partner," the "community"
which itself simultaneously assumes the role of donor and recipient
relative to any connected member. Instead of constructing Napster's
gifting economy as one that takes place in between individuals,
Jeff's statement suggests that some informants see it from an
individual consumer's perspective as a reciprocal giving to and
receiving from the "community." This is in line with
an earlier anthropological understanding of gift giving behavior.
Mauss (1924) has presented it as a way of creating social networks
and individual integration. Reciprocity in social networks does
not necessarily involve total reciprocity between two individuals,
but the social obligation to give, accept, and "repay"
- which means to reciprocate within the network (cf. Gouldner
1960; Levy 1959). An individual Napster user evaluates the single
transaction in the context of multiplicity. In contrast to Sherry
(1983), multiplicity is not reduced to transactions between one
donor and one recipient but is embedded in transactions within
the whole Napster community.
A
Parasitic Gifting Economy
As a way of conferring material benefit on a recipient, gift
giving at Napster opens up a different avenue in that it entirely
brackets away negotiation of equivalent or formal return discussed
e.g. in Sherry's (1983) treatment on the economic dimensions of
the gift in favor of a more communal contribution. Contrasting
"economical equality" underlying most of western gift
giving ideology, a basic principle of fairness at Napster states,
as "Nina" (connected via 56k, sharing 65 files) puts
it, to "have at least a few mp3 files on one's own drive
whenever downloading from another member's." A frequent complaint
in postings and interviews was directed to the existence of "fellow
travelers" or "ignorants" violating this etiquette
by benefiting from Napster's vast collection of music without
contributing to it. Hence when one of the authors tried to download
a file from another member, he instantly received the following
emphatic note from "Tom" (connected via cable, sharing
639 files) via instant messaging:
'Hey, asshole! Don't see a single file on your drive! No sharing,
no Napster! Either you immediately add some or I kick your ass…'
However, a study conducted by the Palo Alto Research Center (Adar
and Huberman 2000) testing the basic principle of fair use at
another music community named Gnutella found that almost 70% of
Gnutella users share no files, and nearly 50% of all responses
are returned by the top 1% of sharing hosts. The authors of the
study argue that, as these communities grow, users will stop producing
and only consume up to a state in which the system collapses due
to the fact that files are only provided by an extremely small
number of hosts. Fellow traveling as observed by Adar and Huberman
seems to be reflected in the statement of "Chris" (connected
via ISDN, sharing 0 files):
'Let me put it this way: we are in a self-service shop here
and I'm not one of those bloody idiots who gives access to their
private hard drives to complete strangers. I mean it's not a security
issue but one of just sucking the latest mp3s from the Internet.'
Napster's ideology of exchange may be better understood employing
Michel Serres's (1980) concept of the parasite. "To be a
parasite means to eat at somebody else's table" (p. 17).
This does not only apply to the Napster phenomenon as a whole
regarding its relation to the recording industry in general but
to Napster's mode of exchange in particular. Parasites, following
Serres in his relevant study, are indispensable whenever the noise
of new conditions has to be translated into a system of relationships.
They are lured by the noise and usefully produce a usable sense
in a previously senseless environment (Baecker 2001). "The
parasite is 'next to', it is 'with', it is detached from, it is
not sitting on the thing itself, but on the relation. It has relations,
as one says, and turns them into a system. It is always mediate
and never immediate. It has a relation to the relation, it is
related to the related, it sits on the channel." (p. 64-5)
In Napster's parasitic economy driven by gift exchange consumers
enrich themselves; they assume the role of host, troublemaker
and parasite at the same time.
Constructing
Community through Giving
The Internet embodies the compression of time and space (Ellul
1964; Gergen 1991; McLuhan 1964) and fluid social situations,
which contributes to the feeling of "no sense of place"
(McLuhan 1964; Meyrowitz 1985). These two dimensions make it possible
for Internet users to create new forms of action and interaction
challenging the ways in which culture, technology and consumption
interrelate. The permanent techno-cultural reconstruction reifies
and reinforces the postmodern principle of "double-coding"
(Jencks 1986) by embodying a variety of existential tensions and
paradoxes. For instance, a well-known paradox includes the tension
between the tendencies of technology to solve problems versus
creating others (Mick and Fournier 1998). Napster's subculture
of consumption is built on individual contribution, big or small,
of enough members and maintained by their gift exchange leading
up to a state of "communal prosperity". The basic paradox
underlying Napster consumption invokes the notion of maintaining
through giving. Following Weiner (1992) all gift exchange is a
search of permanence in a social world that is constantly changing.
As Malinowski ([1922] 1961) remarked in his analysis of the tribal
economics of Trobrianders of Papua New Guinea, there is a "fundamental
human impulse to display, to share, to bestow," a "deep
tendency to create social ties through exchange of gifts."
If we follow Mauss' (1924) fundamental interpretation of giving
of gifts as a prototypical contract (van Baal 1975) and Barlow's
(1995) idea that the traditional community as we know it is "largely
a wraith of nostalgia", and that it is possible to create
a community in cyberspace (Rheingold 1993) with the human spirit
and the basic desire to connect, then in fact, Napster's gifting
economy constructs a parasitic gifting community. It is important
to note that the concept of community at Napster is neither based
on intense textual communication nor on physical contact. Solely
uniting over exchanges and transactions points to a continuous
not necessarily moral connection, but an economic linking value,
as was suggested by Cova (1997) in a framework of the metamorphosis
of social link from tradition to postmodernity. Recognizing the
economic underpinnings of marketing in general and the fact that
the study of Napster concerns gifting as a special category of
exchange, different consumer values, for example, defined "as
an interactive relativistic preference experience" by Holbrook
(1999) referencing Hilliard (1950), point to individual gifting
motivation.
MOTIVATION
To distinguish the strategy that prompts exchange from the structure
of exchange itself it is essential to gauge the motivation of
a member to consume Napster's gifting economy relative to the
community. Two basic conceptual distinctions can help to organize
these motivations at Napster - the purpose of action (cf. Holt
1995), which is gifting here, and the addressee of gifting. In
terms of purpose, gifting behavior can be both ends in itself
(autotelic) and means to some further ends (instrumental). In
terms of addressee, gift giving may range from agonistic, where
the consumer uses gift giving as "a vehicle for self-aggrandizement"
(Sherry 1983) to altruistic where the consumer attempts to enrich
"other(s)". Crossing these two dimensions yields a 2
x 2 matrix placing four metaphors used to describe the predominant
modes of gifting motivation at Napster: gifting as realization,
purification, participation and renovation (see Figure).
| |
|
ADDRESSEE OF ACTION
|
| |
|
Agonistic
Actions |
Altruistic
Actions |
| |
Autotelic
Actions |
| GIFTING AS REALIZATION |
GIFTING AS PARTICIPATION
|
| GIFTING AS PURIFICATION
|
GIFTING AS RENOVATION |
|
| PURPOSE
OF ACTION |
Instrumental
Actions |
| |
|
FIGURE:
FOUR GIFTING METAPHORS
|
|
| |
Gifting as Realization.
The gifting-as-realization metaphor refers to the motivation of
consuming Napster's gifting community simply translated in "for
myself and the song". The primary motivation is the functional
benefit of Napster (Levy 1959); it is more or less a strictly
individualistic utilitarian purpose (Foxall and Goldsmith 1994).
Realizational gifting draws on a consumption experience appreciated
as the satisfaction of primary file sharing needs such as finding
a rare Beatles record as an end in itself. Consider, for example,
"David" (ISDN, sharing 144 files):
Napster is a great way to discover new music, or check out music
before spending the money. At the same time you also find a lot
of music that is just not available anymore or that has never
been published. I found life cuts of Root Boy Slim and a rare
odd flipside of a 45. Root Boy was never released on CD and it
is nice to find high quality recordings available. I was listening
to John Lennon's last interview two hours before he was shot,
which I found on Napster and I also put the music of my band online
and hope someone will download it! Gifting experience for gifting's
sake is accompanied by self-orientation. Though one's Napster
consumption may also provide value to others, the primary source
of value lies in the capacity to contribute to one's own consumption
experience, either being given to or giving.
Gifting as Purification.
Also a personal rather than communal motivation is represented
by the gifting-as-purification metaphor. This metaphor predominantly
points to gifting as a form of resistance against the influence
and impacts of the contemporary music entertainment regime. The
critique against modern music marketing is evident in the picture
drawn by "Laura" (ISDN, 45 files shared). Her statement suggests
a correlation between pop stars and fashion ideals like Britney
Spears and being pressed by the "mass media dictatorship":
Whenever you switch on the TV today they just poison you with
this army of Britney Spears girls and tomorrow you may dress up
like her. A day later you are hanging over the toilet and puking
yourself to the shape of Britney and so on. So what has Napster
got to do with it? It just gives me a way to boycott this whole
mass media dictatorship for the rest of my life! Here self-orientation
means self-extension (Belk 1988, Kozinets and Handelman 1998)
in that gifting is used as an agent through which a personal violation
of moral values is indicated, the differentiation from a surrounding
evil is given form. Personal dissatisfaction with dominant structures
or predominant practices affecting oneself rather than others,
e.g. artists or society, is the motor for critical positioning.
Consuming Napster's gifting economy is prized for its functional
instrumentality in serving as a means to accomplish deliverance
from the evils of mainstream music consumption culture, as a quest
for personal harmony and ethical hygiene. Kozinets and Handelman
(1998) have also stressed the importance of "symbolic personal
significance as a vehicle of self-realization and personal harmony"
as a dimension of resistance. Gifting serves as a way to come
closer to one's "ideal" self. The ideal "music fan" in the case
of "Thomas" (ISDN, sharing 357 files), seems to hearken back to
their discussion: Boycotting the business is an issue for any
real music fan! It's not fellow traveling some crazy fashion,
it's for yourself! Holbrook's typology of customer value posits
that ethics (including justice, virtue, and morality) is one of
eight kinds of value that may be obtained in the consumption experience.
Smith (1996) has suggested a distinction between altruistic and
agonistic motivation of consumption experiences. Thus gifting
as a means of boycotting at Napster can here be understood as
an agonistic act of ethical purification for oneself.
Gifting as Participation.
The gifting-as-participation metaphor emphasizes those motivations
that are drawn from the impulse to belong and to integrate. Typically,
participation in a community here is an end in itself maintaining
social ties while being only perfunctorily interested in the central
consumption activity. For example, "Sarah" (ISDN, sharing 72 files)
illustrates her happiness about participating:
It feels good to be part of such a powerful movement. Isn't it
strange that people all over the world have somehow the same feelings?
The community is seen as a movement, which one wishes to join
in order to add value to others. At this end, altruism is used
here not to denote selflessness, but rather to indicate a primary
intention to please one's exchange partners in the first sense
and thus becoming "a part of it" in the second sense. The individual
benefit of file sharing via Napster may at the same time act to
represent consumers to other consumers, expressing their membership
(Foxall and Goldsmith 1994) in Napster's file sharing community.
Gifting as Renovation.
A fourth dimension, gifting as renovation, emphasizes Napster's
role as a locus of communally enacted social change. Gifting is
attached to a political matter of concern, as a means of liberation
from the former limitations set by the old order of music business
in capitalist society. Consumers often refer to the perils of
copyright which, following "Derek" (cable, sharing 693 copyrighted
files), "has eaten those art species that are not accepted by
the masses", while at the same time offering alternative ways
to think about the status and value of information as "a free
resource for all of us". It is a widespread practice to attach
socialistic, anarchist and revolutionary metaphor to the gifting
economy of Napster. For instance, visual proof is found in old
socialist poster and graffiti nostalgia as in "Napster - la revolución",
subtitling the portrait of Che Guevara on the background of rebellious
labor class workers (see http://www.napsterresearch.com) as well
as a fake "reminder of the Recording Industry Association of America"
warning "When you pirate MP3s you are downloading communism",
accompanied by a scene showing diabolical accomplice Lenin encouraging
an obviously American white male student surfer to consume MP3.
The "Napster Manifesto", an anonymous call for "net communism"
even makes use of Marx's and Engel's Communist Manifesto while
plugging in the term "music industry" and "capitalism" for terms
like "bourgeoisie", "bourgeoisie class" or "agriculture and manufacturing
industry":
We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose
foundation the music industry built itself up, were generated
in a capitalistic society. At a certain stage in the development
of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under
which capitalistic society produced and exchanged, the capitalistic
organization of the music industry, in one word, the capitalistic
relations of property became no longer compatible with the already
developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They
had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder. Where Marx and
Engels cried "Abolition of property!" some Napster users cry "Freedom
of Information!" today. Gifting becomes a tool for the collapse
of the old capitalist system and the end of capitalist market
hegemony while serving as an alternative consumption activity
at the electronic frontier. However, it is important to carve
out the insuperable paradox in this observation: Napster itself
is driven by market forces and products while intensively refusing
the market's validity in search of a self-reflexive otherness.
Consuming resistance against well-established market and industry
structures at Napster, both in the case of gifting as renovation
and purification is like going with the parasite against the parasite.
Returning to the early work of Baudrillard (1968), Napster seeks
to build up and communicate an alternative to the regime of signs,
and in doing so, it still resides in its center.
CONCLUSION
In this paper we have developed a theoretical framework that
offers the concept of the parasitic gifting community to understand
consumption meanings of file sharing systems such as Napster et
aliud. Within this framework we discussed the structure, describing
the gifting economy and the ways in which it constructs community.
Moving our focus to the motivation of gifting at Napster we developed
a schema of four metaphors describing the predominant motivations
attached to Napster's gifting economy.
Under acknowledgement of the above mentioned methodological restrictions
caused by the nature of textual communication in cyberspace and
the crisis of representation (Sherry and Kozinets 2000), the study
of Napster can hold several important insights for consumer behavior
research in the fields of gift giving, community in cyberspace,
consumer resistance and emancipatory consumption (Giesler and
Pohlmann 2002). Digital technology in networks yields a new information
economy based on gift giving. Gifting unites consumers in parasitic
gifting communities, which serve as a locus to celebrate alternative
and emancipatory modes of consumption. The "parasitic"
offers at least two different perspectives. First, consumers engage
in the gifting community to overcome the parasitic outside inside
contemporary consumption culture through different forms of resistance.
Second and in doing so, consumers are hosted by exactly those
parasitic entities they wish to overcome.
The concept of parasitism also promises further enlightment in,
for example, Holt's (2002) suggestion to see Marketing in postmodernity
as a parasitic cultural machine "that pilfers from public
culture to cycle through commodities valued meanings and pleasures
at an ever increasing velocity". Napster's parasitic gifting
economy also draws on previous attempts to define marketing which,
following Kotler (2000) involves exchanges of value, as a transaction
between two parties in which each party gives something of value
in return for something of value. Conversely, exchange within
parasitic gifting economies is multidirectional. Relations are
established in the community and it is impossible to offset the
one against the other. Hence another concept of value is needed,
adding to our understanding the ways parasitism evolves consumption.
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