The Social Construction of Napster
Name
4445-03.pdf
Size
246.81 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
d071acea8edb5a7fbebc68c5dfae3f11
Author(s)
Spitz, David
Hunter, Starling
Date Issued
March 5, 2004
Series/Report no.
MIT Sloan School of Management Working Paper;4445-03
Abstract
This paper attempts to unpack a few of the vast array of assumptions implicit in how "the technology" known as Napster was understood by several of its key constituencies. Our approach examines discourse about Napster in several areas - legal, economic, social, and cultural. This approach enables us to understand "the technology" as an ongoing encounter, rather than the accomplishment of any one inventor, team of inventors, dominant institution, or rule of law. We do not offer proscriptive advice. While there is value in other research that has tried to determine the "impact of Napster on" a particular market or industry, we argue that a multidimensional understanding is necessary both as a foundation for such research as well as in its own right. In only the past four years, dominant interpretations of Napster have not only emerged, but also have been inscribed into laws, business plans, and purchasing decisions, in effect, determining what "tools" - precedents, myths, data sets, prior objects, capabilities - will be available in the future. Our paper tries to show how and why certain (subjective) significations increasingly have taken on the status of truth, while other (equally subjective) discourses have been pushed farther and farther out to the fringes
Subjects
Napster
peer to peer
culture
information technology
music industry
digital music
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