The “rise” and “fall” of the MP3scene: A Global and Virtual Organization An organizational, social relational and technological analysis Research thesis June 2009 Student: Jan Adriaan van der Wal Study: Information Science Mentor: dr. Ard Huizing Abstract. The scene, a synonym for the ‘Warez’1 scene, is a global and virtual organization where people copy, crack and distribute copyrighted digital material. The scene is split up into different areas, each with its own specific organizational structure, genre and practice. Amongst these areas are the games, MP3 (music), movies and software scene. The scene is a quite closed and fairly unknown organization that operates on the Internet. Unique organizational structures and many complex social relational and technological processes make this organisation an interesting phenomenon to study. This research is aimed at the MP3scene and describes the development and evolution from the start until its state today from an academic point of view. The objective of this research is to gain more insights in the ongoing organizational, social relational and technological processes within a global and virtual organization like the MP3scene. Acknowledgement. Individuals: Ard H., Steven G., Paul G., Bart B., Lir, D.H., xenner, toma, ktaakt. Groups: MS, MiM, SE Keywords: community, practice, emerging, structure-agency, complex global microstructures, sociality, institutionalizing, engagement, identity, social learning, passion and anarchy Author: J.A. van der Wal, [email protected] 1 ‘Warez’ is a term to define pirated material. Tetzlaf, D. (2000). Yo-Ho-Ho and a Server of Warez: Internet Software Piracy and the New Global Information Economy. In A. Herman, & T. Swiss, The World Wide Web and Contemporary Cultural Theory (pp. 99-126). New York: Routledge. Table of Contents 1. Introduction................................................................................................................2 1.1. Research questions ......................................................................................................... 3 1.2. Theoretical Framework .................................................................................................. 3 1.3. Methodology .................................................................................................................. 5 2. The Scene...................................................................................................................8 2.1. The Scene Before the Internet...................................................................................... 10 2.2. Legal Actions Against the Scene.................................................................................. 11 2.2.1. Operation Fastlink (February 2001)...................................................................... 11 2.2.2. Operation Buccaneer (December 2001)................................................................ 12 2.2.3. Operation Safehaven (April 2003)........................................................................ 12 2.2.4. Operation Site Down (June 2005)......................................................................... 13 3. The MP3scene..........................................................................................................16 3.1. Organizational Structure............................................................................................... 17 3.1.1. IRC (Internet Relay Chat)..................................................................................... 19 3.1.2. Releasegroups ....................................................................................................... 19 3.1.3. Topsites ................................................................................................................. 20 3.1.4. MP3 Council ......................................................................................................... 22 3.2. From an Album to MP3................................................................................................ 24 3.3. Facts and Figures.......................................................................................................... 27 4. Critical Events in the MP3scene..............................................................................29 4.1. Introduction of the MP3 File Format ........................................................................... 29 4.2. BeatForge Forming into a Group ................................................................................. 29 4.3. Forming of the MP3 Council........................................................................................ 29 4.4. Enforcing Dupecheck................................................................................................... 30 4.5. Adoption of Prebots...................................................................................................... 30 4.6. Web Accepted as a Valid Source ................................................................................. 31 4.7. Influx of Releasegroups................................................................................................ 32 4.8. Declining Social Activity ............................................................................................. 32 5. Social Relational and Organizational Processes......................................................34 5.1. Analysis of Agency ...................................................................................................... 35 5.1.1. Reasons and Motivations of Participation ............................................................ 36 5.1.2. Lifespan of Releasegroups and Social Cohesion .................................................. 38 5.2. Analysis of Practice...................................................................................................... 40 5.3. Analysis of Structure.................................................................................................... 41 5.3.1. Complex Global Microstructures.......................................................................... 41 5.3.2. Institutionalizing ................................................................................................... 43 5.3. Community of Practice and Learning .......................................................................... 44 5.4. Dynamics Between Processes ...................................................................................... 47 6. Conclusion ...............................................................................................................49 7. Bibliography ............................................................................................................50 Appendix 1:..................................................................................................................52 Appendix 2:..................................................................................................................53 Appendix 3:..................................................................................................................54 Appendix 4:..................................................................................................................55 1 1. Introduction Today a lot of research is being conducted on social organizations and communities that can only exist because of the Internet. Common examples of these communities are the social network site Facebook, the microblogging2 website Twitter, the music community Last.fm and the many weblogs that can be found on the web. These websites and communities all emerged in the Web 2.0 era and they are focused upon the end user and the interactions between them. Current research is focussed on the various aspects of these new forms of organizations. Kaiser, Muller-Seitz, Lopes, & Pina e Cunha (2007) describe in their article Weblog-technology as a trigger to elicit passion for knowledge the community of the Microsoft Longhorn Blogosphere. Slater (2002) analyses a community that exchanges erotic material on the Internet in his article Making things real: Ethics and order on the Internet. Knorr Cetina (2005) defines a new form of organization in her article Complex global microstructures: The new terrorist societies. She uses the Islamic terrorist organization “Al Qaida” to analyze its cell-like organizational structure. Despite that the scene emerged before the Web 2.0 era, its organizational structures and social relational processes have not been extensively studied before but might reveal interesting information. Different areas are represented within the scene and the most popular are the music, movie, software and games scene. The music scene, also known as the MP3scene, is currently the most active area of the scene. This thesis is an attempt to describe the MP3scene as an extensive, global and virtual organization that is fairly unknown to most people. This organization emerged not dependent on money as its key driver but more based on anarchic and idealistic motives. Its members have different nationalities and come from all over the world and live in different time zones. These characteristics make this type of organization an interesting phenomenon to study. The main research objective is to explore how this self-organizing organization emerged and developed during the years and to identify its agency. To identify and capture the various organizational, technological and social aspects, the structure- agency theory of Giddens (1984) is used as a guiding framework.