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joncoopertoday at 11:48 AM0 repliesview on HN

Oh wow, blast from the past! I do too.

I published a sociology paper on this in college that may be of interest! (2000)

The social organization of audio piracy on the Internet (Media, Culture, and Society)

"In this article, we describe and analyze the emerging audio piracy (MP3) subculture on the Internet. As is evident to even the most naïve observer of the contemporary landscape, the explosion of Internet-based communication is radically redefining the nature of social relationships in modern societies, if not creating altogether novel forms of social interaction (Lyotard, 1991; Stone, 1996).

Yet sociologists have yet to take the Internet seriously as a site of ethnographic investigation. Where sociological observation concerning the Internet exists at all, it is through vague generalizations and unqualified assertions about what these new virtual forms of communication portend for “society” (Kellner, 1995), offering little in the way of concrete social research.

We attempt to advance the sociological study of “virtual communities” by embarking on an extremely focused study of one particular Internet subculture that is literally revolutionizing the production and consumption of popular music: audio pirates."

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/q3tcst00gjbwr5t02x38f/Social-...