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Downloading deviance: Symbolic interactionism and unauthorised file-sharing

Marketing Theory 13(3) 263–274 ª The Author(s) 2013 Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1470593113487189 mtq.sagepub.com

Robert Cluley University of Leicester, UK

Abstract Despite attempts to encourage music consumers in countries including the United Kingdom, France and United States to download music from legal sources, many not only continue to download from unauthorised sources but reject the very idea that what they are doing is wrong. Symbolic interactionist sociology helps us to structure these failed attempts to control this consumer misbehaviour. It shows us that opponents and proponents of illegal downloading have become locked in a battle over who can define behavioural standards for consuming music. This battle has come to a standstill as both sides have turned to the same economic imperative – that creators should be rewarded for their work – to justify their positions. Moving beyond this economic imperative, the article concludes, may mark a symbolic but ultimately hollow victory for proponents of unauthorised file-sharing. Keywords Illegal downloading, misbehaviour, music industry, symbolic interactionism

Introduction Downloading music from unauthorised sources is an illegal act in many countries (IFPI, 2012). In the United Kingdom, France and United States, to name but a few examples, we have seen a number of high-profile lawsuits against illegal downloaders and new legislation introduced to stop people sharing copyrighted music online without permission (Chang, 1998; Denegri-Knott, 2004; Denegri-Knott and Tadajewski, 2010; Elberse, 2008; Langenderfer and Kopp, 2004; Nill and Geipel, 2010; Sinha et al., 2010; Sinha and Mandel, 2008). Yet, as Fullerton and Punj (1997)

Corresponding author: Robert Cluley, School of Management, University of Leicester, Leicester, LE1 7RH, UK. Email: [email protected]

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predict, it has proven difficult to control this consumer misbehaviour through prohibition alone. Consequently, alongside these attempts to criminalise consumers who download from unauthorised sources, there have been a number of marketing campaigns highlighting the damaging effects of illegal downloading on musicians, music companies and society at large. However, evidence suggests that such campaigns have been just as ineffective as prohibition. The BPI, a trade body representing the UK music industries, reports that ‘76% of all music tracks obtained during 2010’ came from illegal sources and that nearly half of these came from unauthorised file-sharing (2012: 3, 26). If anything, then, the increased efforts to control this consumer misbehaviour, which largely frame downloading as an immoral act because of its economic consequences, seem to correlate with increased instances of it occurring (Breen, 2004; Easley, 2005; Forde, 2004). Indeed, many music consumers counter the moral claims against unauthorised file-sharing by highlighting an economic ethic to illegal downloading (Condry, 2004). They present it as a moral act against an exploitative industry (Anderson, 2006; Bishop, 2005; Lessig, 2004). In this article, I structure the attempts to combat illegal downloading – primarily drawing on examples from the United Kingdom, France and United States – through symbolic interactionist sociology. Symbolic interactionist sociology allows us understand the discussion around downloading as more than a discussion over whether unauthorised file-sharing is right or wrong (Denegri-Knott and Taylor, 2005; Harris and Dumas, 2009). It helps us reinterpret it as a battle between marketers and consumers over who has the power to set ‘behavioural standards’ in consumer cultures (Fullerton and Punj, 2004: 1427). It does so through a fully worked theory of social interaction (Cluley, 2012) which is, at present, often left underdeveloped in the discussion of consumer misbehaviours (Fullerton and Punj, 1998). So, while the analysis focuses on the issue of downloading music, the article contributes to our understanding of consumer misbehaviours at the ‘macro level’ (Fullerton and Punj, 2004: 1239). As such, the article extends work by Taylor et al. (2002) who analyse illegal downloading as a social drama, Giesler’s (2006) and Giesler and Pohl´ lvarez et al.’s (2009) mann’s (2002) analyses of illegal downloading as gift giving and Garcia-A conclusion that attitudes to downloading depend on social, economic and cultural contexts.

Illegal downloading There is no question on either side of the downloading debate whether the unauthorised sharing of copyrighted music online is illegal in many, although not all, countries (Bishop, 2005; Easley, 2005; Lessig, 2004). The UK government’s Digital Britain report, for instance, explains that in the United Kingdom ‘online copyright infringement’ is the same as offline copyright infringement: it is theft (DCMS, 2009: 226). Indeed, to clarify their laws concerning downloading music, the UK government recently ratified the Digital Economy Act and the French government passed the Hadopi Law (IFPI, 2012). As we will see, though, the key question is not whether certain forms of downloading music are illegal but whether consumers feel that these acts are wrong. There is nothing immediately immoral in the act of unauthorised file-sharing. If you were to watch someone sat at a computer you would not easily be able to tell whether they were downloading music legally – even in countries such as the United Kingdom and France, where there are laws specifying what is and is not legal when it comes to downloading music. The first thing you need to engage in unauthorised file-sharing is a computer with Internet access. You need some software such as Emule, Limewire or Napster, which, themselves, can be downloaded for free. Once you have installed one of these peer-to-peer programmes, you can begin downloading. Peer-to-peer

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programmes and dedicated search engines such as Pirate Bay allow you to search for songs from other users. After finding music you want, within a few clicks of your mouse, you can download a copy. At some point in this process, you might be asked to make a voluntary donation to the software provider or view a pop-up advert. For legal downloading, the process is almost identical. You need a computer with Internet access, you need software such as Apples’ iTunes Store and, once you have set up your profile, you can search for music and, within a few clicks of your mouse, download it. At this point, you will be either automatically charged for the song or asked to enter payment details. The immediate difference, then, is that you do not necessarily pay the music producer when you download illegally. Bishop (2004) reminds us, though, that consumers do not always pay the producer even when they consume music legally. As Harker (1997) points out, music consumers have always been able to legally acquire music without paying either the musicians who made the music or the music companies who distributed and marketed it. Marketing managers, for example, offer free music to consumers in advertisements and in-store servicescapes. So there is nothing inherently wrong in consuming music for free per se. But unauthorised file-sharing also allows music consumers to distribute music freely (Giesler, 2006). In this sense, the iTunes Store is a clear marker of difference. While unauthorised peer-topeer programmes allow users to make copies from other music consumers – in the store you can only consume music offered by music producers (Giesler and Pohlmann, 2002). Unauthorised filesharing, then, not only challenges music company profits but also challenges those who control the supply chain of music. Yet, people have long challenged forms of control exerted in the formal music industries without necessarily breaking any laws (Peterson and Berger, 1975). Whether it is counterfeiters legally trading tapes and compact disks (CDs) outside of copyright regimes or multinational businesses supplying innovative hardware, music companies have fluctuated between ignoring, criminalising and colluding with these outside industries (Heylin, 2003; Huygens et al., 2001; Power and Hallencreutz, 2002). So even here, it is hard to set out a clear distinction between legal and illegal downloading. Previously, though, it was only a relatively small number of people who consumed music outside of the formal music market (Finnegan, 1989). Trends in home computing, notably increased computer memory capacity, high-speed Internet connections, CD rewriting technology and MP3 file compression have made it easier for music consumers to access music outside of the formal music market (Jones, 2002). What has shocked many in the music industries, however, is the willingness of consumers to engage in this activity. In this regard, Bishop (2005), a vocal critic of international music corporations, argues that unauthorised file-sharing is only treated as an illegal act in contexts where economically and politically powerful music corporations have been able to influence law makers to protect their rights and profits. On this point, Wheeldon (2009) reports that large record companies were only too happy to ignore downloading, even illegal downloading, when they were making sufficient profits from physical records. So, despite being illegal in countries such as the United Kingdom, France and United States, many consumers share music files using unauthorised peer-to-peer software. We might excuse this behaviour because consumers have been given mixed messages from copyright holders in the music industry. In the United Kingdom, for example, the Digital Economy Act has been subject to much controversy and was initially delayed by a judicial review and numerous legal challenges by Internet service providers. But many music consumers know only too well that what they are doing is illegal and know only too well that legal substitutes are available to them yet they continue ´ lvarez et al., 2009). In the United Kingdom, for example, to download illegally anyway (Garcia-A

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‘levels of unauthorised downloading remain high . . . despite the presence of more than 70 legal services’ (IFPI, 2012: 18). That is to say, even though they know it is illegal, many music consumers do not feel that downloading music from unauthorised sources is wrong.

The labelling theory of deviance The labelling theory of deviance, developed within the symbolic interactionist tradition of sociology, addresses cases in which people accept that an act is illegal but do it anyway. It is recommended by Fullerton and Punj for ‘illuminat[ing] the significance of moral ‘‘relativism’’ in understanding consumer misbehavior’ (2004: 1242) and has been used in consumer research to contextualise online consumer behaviour. The theory starts with the assumption that few activities are inherently wrong. Instead, they tend to have wrongness, or deviance, applied to them through structured social interactions in which people with economic, political and social power label others as deviant (Becker, 1963; Cohen, 1965; Manza, 1969). Accordingly, the theory does not help us explain why someone performs an illegal act, but it does show us how an act comes ‘to have the quality of being deviant’ (Becker, 1986: 34). Becker explains: Labelling theory analyzed ‘deviance’ as the result of complicated, many-stage interactions involving accusers, accused, and a variety of official and unofficial organizations. Such an approach generally cast doubt on conventional assignments of praise and blame, on the allocation of actors to the Good Guys or the Bad Guys, by showing that the process of accusation and proof of guilt was a social process, not a scientific procedure. Critics appalled by such relativism, often asked something like this: ‘Well, what about murder? Isn’t that really deviant?’ They implied that while many acts might exhibit the definitional variation that was the key insight of the approach, some acts are so heinous that no reasonable person would ever define them in a way that excused the person or persons or organizations that had committed them. It never helped, when this accusation was made, to point out that whether something was murder, as opposed to justified homicide or self-defense or acting on behalf of your country or supporting law and order, was exactly a definitional matter. (2007: 144–45)

Simply put, the theory tells us that the label of deviance is applied when groups enforce social rules that specify some actions as ‘right’ and others as ‘wrong’ (Becker, 1963: 1). The obvious example of a social rule is formal law but social rules can be less formal yet even more powerful. For example, in the United Kingdom, there are several formal laws concerning noise pollution set out in the Control of Noise at Work Regulation 2005, the Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003 and the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environmental Act 2005. On certain occasions, though, these laws are not enforced. This might be because people are not aware of them but it might be because people choose to ignore them. If we were celebrating a special occasion, say a birthday, we might knowingly break the formal rule surrounding noise by throwing a party into the early hours of the morning. As neighbours, we might complain to the police and ask them to enforce the formal law for us. But if we were forewarned of the party, we might excuse any rowdy behaviour. We might join in the fun too, accepting that a birthday mitigates some rule-breaking activities. In this situation, informal rules would dictate our behaviour not formal ones. In fact, we might feel that if we enforced formal rules here, we would be breaking some other, more powerful, informal rules. The important point for labelling theorists is, in this regard, that our behaviour continues to be structured by social rules even if these rules are not written down in a statute book. As Cohen puts it:

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Responses to deviance can no more be left normatively unregulated than deviance itself. Whose business it is to intervene, at what point, and what he may or may not do is defined by a normatively established division of labor. In short, for any given role—parent, priest, psychiatrist, neighbor, policeman, judge—the norms prescribe, with varying degrees of definiteness, what they are supposed to do and how they are supposed to do it when other persons, in specified roles, misbehave. (1965: 9)

Understood in this way, whether an act is considered deviant can be seen as the result of groups labelling an act as wrong and enforcing a punishment on anyone who commits it. Labelling theorists argue that all punishments are designed to push the deviant to the margins of society. Some place ‘the actor in circumstances which make it harder for him to continue the normal routines of everyday life’ (Becker, 1963: 179). Physical punishments, for example, stop people from performing an act by imprisoning them. Other punishments constrain the lifestyle of the deviant and thereby ‘provoke’ them into ‘‘‘abnormal’’ actions (as when a prison record makes it harder to earn a living at a conventional occupation and so disposes its possessor to move into an illegal one)’ (Becker, 1963: 179). Other punishments allow actors to continue performing an act that has been labelled deviant as long as they hide their activities (Becker, 1963: 168). But not everyone accepts such punishments. One common reaction for those who are accused of misbehaving is to seek strength in numbers. They form groups and ‘develop full-blown ideologies explaining why they are right and why those who disapprove of and punish them are wrong’ (Becker, 1963: 3). In such cases, people challenge the economic, political and social power of those attempting to label them as deviant. This leads these deviant groups to display their supposedly deviant acts in an attempt to demonstrate the powerlessness of the supposedly powerful. In the process, they accept the label but they reject the punishment that comes with it. So the labelling theory of deviance not only shows us the relativism inherent in misbehaviour but also shows us that attempts to enforce social rules tend to follow a number of common plot lines in which both the deviant and those labelling them play an equal part. As Becker (1964: 2) puts it, the accused and accusers are ‘functions of one another’. Their interactions might appear unequal – and, in terms of economic, social and political power, they are – but both sides must play their role for an act to be deviant. Cohen summarises, ‘movement in a deviant direction may become more explicit, elaborated, definitive—or it may not. Although the act may be socially ascribed to only one of them, both . . . help to shape it’ (1965: 9).

Discipline and punish We can probably all think back to times when we realised that we have done something wrong after we have done it – whether that is driving through a red traffic light or walking out of a shop without paying for an item. Inevitably, our first thought will be, did anyone see me? If not, we will probably assume that we have got away with it and will go about our day. Implicitly, then, many of us recognise the importance of being caught by someone. As we have seen, the labelling theory takes this further by emphasising that someone can tell us something is wrong but that we have to agree it is and agree to be punished. The power to label an act as deviant can come from formal law or from informal social rules but the person being labelled deviant has to act appropriately. We see an example of this in relation to illegal downloading in Taylor et al.’s (2002) account of Napster. They (2002: 624) explain: one co-author (Jeff Dodge) proudly announced to his wife that he has, for the purposes of ‘research’, downloaded his first music file from Napster. Since Jeff’s spouse is a professional musician, she

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responded with a spirited defence of artistic interests in this controversy. Jeff has not downloaded since.

Dodge, then, was proud to have downloaded a song illegally until he saw the reaction of his wife. Even though his wife was not formally in a position to punish him, at this point he had a choice: he could accept his wife’s complaint and change his behaviour or oppose her. He chose the former and reports that he has stopped downloading from unauthorised sources. With this in mind, we can ask whether those who have sought to enforce the laws concerning unauthorised filesharing have been as successful in their attempts to label it a deviant act by examining whether downloaders have performed the role of deviants. Opponents to illegal downloading in countries such as the United Kingdom, France and United States have followed two distinct strategies to make illegal downloading visible and to punish those who do it – which map onto Fullerton and Punj’s concepts of deterrence and education (1997: 34). First, music industry representatives such as the BPI, Recording Industry Association of America and IFPI have lobbied governments to criminalise downloaders, reform copyright laws and fully enforce existing laws. The Digital Economy Act in the United Kingdom and the Hadopi Law in France represent recent successes here. These have had an effect on cutting off the supply of unauthorized content, but it is questionable whether they have proven successful in changing music consumer’s behaviours (BPI, 2012; IFPI, 2012). It is also questionable whether they were actually designed to change consumer’s behaviours. McCourt and Burkart (2003: 346) conclude that multinational corporations in the music industry focused more on using ‘copyright enforcement to tighten their grip on Internet music distribution’ than changing attitudes. Second, there have been attempts to reshape the informal social rules concerning illegal downloading in countries such as the United Kingdom, France and United States. Music industry groups have initiated and sponsored marketing campaigns to encourage consumers to act as responsible consumers (Taylor et al., 2002). As Geoff Taylor (2008), the head of the BPI, puts it copyright laws ‘exist and are supported by our society for good reason . . . some fundamental principles must stand – and that creators should be fairly rewarded for their work is one such principle’. In this regard, in the United Kingdom, the BPI (2008) has promoted the use of a pocket-sized guide titled Young People, Music and the Internet designed to educate young consumers away from illegal downloading. The BPI (2008) has also publicised attempts by a leading Internet service provider in the United Kingdom to educate its customers to ‘safely download music from the internet and avoid the risk of legal action’. Becker (1963: 147) calls groups like BPI moral entrepreneurs. Their position within the process of labelling an activity deviant is extremely important yet precocious. They are people who catch deviants in action. But they can, as we will see, also undermine attempt to apply the deviant label. Becker (1963: 153) tells us that moral entrepreneurs might begin with a passion or cause – their moral ‘preoccupation’ – but this rapidly comes to take over more of their time until it becomes their ‘occupation’. Moral entrepreneurs exist, in other words, to enforce moral standards but, as Becker’s choice of the term moral entrepreneurship makes clear, they are engaged in an economic activity. Moral entrepreneurs need to make their campaigns pay. They draw on ‘political and economic power’, on the one hand, to ‘force others to accept their rules’ and, on the other hand, to fund their moral preoccupation as it becomes their occupation (Becker, 1963: 17). So the logic of capital lurks within their campaigns. It is these economic interests that provide opponents of moral entrepreneurs – the people they are attempting to label and punish as deviants – with their most potent justifications for their behaviour. Behind the moralizing, the people moral entrepreneurs are accusing can claim, is that most immoral of morals: the profit motive.

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Demonising the demoniser The problem with the appeal to economic justice at the heart of attempts to deter and educate music consumers away from unauthorised file-sharing in Europe and America, then, is that it provides ammunition for the proponents of illegal downloading to justify their actions. The more vehemently people try to label illegal downloading as a deviant act through appeals to economic justice, the more vehemently illegal downloaders can justify their actions. Indeed, when we look at examples of the counterarguments put forward by vocal proponents of illegal downloading, we see that they not only reject the label of deviance but also reject the idea that they do not respect property rights or want to reward creators for their work. They claim that it is actually the people trying to label them deviant who are guilty of that. If we look at downhillbattle.com, a website that campaigned against media control, or accounts by the founders of Napster or Pirate Bay, we see clearly that proponents of illegal downloading claim that they do respect the principle of rewarding creators of their work. Taking downhillbattle.com, for example, we are told that the best way ‘to support the musicians you love . . . is by downloading the song for free on a file sharing network. Then send them what you want to give, no middleman’. In fact, for downhillbattle.com, it is the major record companies and legal downloading distribution network that actually contravene the principle that creators are rewarded for their work. As they argue in their early polemic, ‘iTunes iSbogus’, any attempts to reward musicians fairly for their work or grant them control over their music through online media have been undermined by moves to force ‘the same exploitive and unfair business model onto a new medium’. Focusing on the economic justice of illegal downloading, they explain: Apple says iTunes is ‘better than free’ because it’s ‘fair to the artists and record labels’. That’s simply not true. First of all, Apple gets 3 times as much money as musicians from each sale. Apple takes a 35% cut from every song and every album sold, a huge amount considering how little they have to do. Record labels receive the other 65% of each sale. Of this, major label artists will end up with only 8 to 14 cents per song, depending on their contract. Many of them will never even see this paltry share because they have to pay for producers and recording costs, both of which can be enormous. Until the musician ‘recoups’ these costs, when you buy an iTunes song, the label gives them nothing. . . . Despite huge new efficiencies created by internet distribution – no CDs to make, no distributors to store and ship them, no CD stores to build and run – artists receive the same pathetic cut. That is the disaster of iTunes. Instead of using this new medium to empower musicians and their fans, it helps the record industry cartel perpetuate the exploitation. (http://web.archive.org/web/20090309011053/http://www.downhillbattle.org/itunes/)

Here we see evidence of groups who justify illegal downloading by using the same economic argument that is used by its opponents to frame it as an immoral act. Data analysed by Condry (2004) concerning individual music consumers is particularly revealing in this light. Condry (2004) studies students’ attitudes towards downloading and shows how students reinterpret the economic and moral arguments used to demonise illegal downloading to construct their own justifications for it. Condry tells us: Based on discussions with students, and the results of 70 essay question surveys in 2003–4, a common theme is that students acknowledge that downloading music is illegal, but they justify it in terms of their antipathy towards the recording industry. One consequence of the recording industry’s strategy of using the language of stealing, piracy, and ethics to make its case is that students respond by questioning the industry’s own ‘stealing’ and ‘ethics’. (2004: 356)

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In this regard, Condry (2004) exposes a fully blown ideology that students use to justify their knowing rule-breaking behaviour that draws on precisely the same economic imperative that is used by moral entrepreneurs in their attempt to change their behaviour. This justification might not have been what caused the students to begin downloading but it becomes important to them as others try to label them as deviants. Condry continues: One finding surprised me the most. In class, when I play devil’s advocate and try to get students to feel guilty about file sharing, I’ve been struck by how resolutely they defend their actions by referring to record company injustices, celebrity compensation, deceptive marketing, and unfair prices. In the fall of 2003, I started asking students a new question: Is there some music you would always pay for? Most students said yes. They mentioned indie artists, or artists from their hometown, whom they know ‘need the money’. Some students identified major groups ‘with a solid track record of good albums’. Other students mentioned entire genres of music, notably, jazz and classical music, because ‘they stand the test of time’, and because they are not adequately supported by major record companies. (2004: 358)

Condry’s (2004) analysis suggests, in short, that some downloaders have, following the discourse promoted by downhillbattle.com, turned the economic arguments used to demonise illegal downloading against the very social actors who have attempted to label them as deviant. They have used the argument issued to encourage them to stop downloading illegally to justify doing it. In so doing, they challenge the legitimacy of those who attempt to label them deviant and change their consumer behaviours. The other side of this, of course, is that the more powerfully moral entrepreneurs have made their case against illegal downloading in an attempt to monetise this consumption, the less successful they have been. Fullerton and Punj (1998) argue that this switch is an inevitable consequence of enforcing social rules concerning consumption in a culture of consumption. They discuss it in terms of the relationship between marketers and consumers more generally, picturing this relationship as a battle over who has the power to decide the right and wrong forms of market interaction. They explain that ‘the great paradox of the modern culture of consumption’ is that the more marketers exert power by tempting consumers to buy their goods, the more they tempt them to take them without paying (2004: 1248). The more marketers attempt to regulate consumers’ behaviours, the more consumers will want to misbehave. One reason for this is that consumers and marketers both have the power to set and enforce social rules but both want the other to bend to their will. Fullerton and Punj continue, ‘The power to label misbehaviour appears to be reciprocally shared between marketers and consumers. It is at the heart of who (if anyone) within a consumer culture has the ability to impose behavioral standards’ (2004: 1247).

Moving on So the main argument used by opponents of illegal downloading is based on an appeal to economic justice. This appeal, though, provides proponents of illegal downloading with their most potent justification for their activities and allows them to turn the accusation of wrongdoing back on the moral entrepreneurs who are trying to label them as wrongdoers. Indeed, they do this by using the moral entrepreneur’s own morality. In this instance, both sides agree on the logic but not the conclusions made by the other side based on that logic. The result is that both sides of the downloading debate have demonstrated their ability to resist the other’s attempts to set behavioural standards for music consumption. At stake, in other words, is more than downloading. It is this that had made their positions intractable for nearly a decade (Denegri-Knott, 2006).

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Nevertheless, after several years locked in this gridlock – with moral entrepreneurs such as the BPI and IFPI and representatives of illegal downloading both claiming the moral high-ground – there is now some evidence that things are changing. Internationally, the IFPI (2012) reports that sales of legal downloads are increasing and new platforms for accessing content legally are proving increasingly popular. In this regard, the United Kingdom is often held up as an example of an ambivalent music market regarding downloading. It has a vocal and influential moral entrepreneur in the BPI and a rich history as a music producer (Cluley, 2009). However, it has not been able to enforce its copyright laws effectively and, as we have seen, many of the education techniques promoted have not worked. Yet, even in the United Kingdom, evidence suggests that the legal download market is growing and growing in comparison to the illegal download market (BPI, 2012: 29). We might ask, therefore, whether the labelling theory of deviance helps us to account for this development. Giesler (2008) argues that illegal downloaders occupy one of four roles and that the music market reacts to these roles as if their interactions were scripted. That is to say, Giesler (2008: 750) argues that downloading is a social drama in which actors follow set narratives in which some are more easily convinced to stop illegal downloading than others. He goes further, however, to show how these scripts are produced symbiotically between resistant consumers and music corporations and he draws on Holt’s (2002) description of a ‘parasitic relationship’ between market innovation and consumer resistance in which a ‘corporate quest’ for innovation takes inspiration from resistant consumers. As such, Giesler’s (2008) analysis portrays downloading as an example of an outsider group being dragged inside – sometimes unwillingly but often willingly. Although Denegri-Knott (2006) emphasises a distinction between innovation and deviance, in this regard, we may be able to position illegal downloading alongside other deviant acts analysed in classic labelling theory research. Becker (1963), for example, looks at marijuana users, jazz musicians and homosexual among others. These deviances have become less deviant over time. In these cases, as with some accounts of illegal downloading, their deviance was associated with particular rebellious groups – typically young men. One explanation is simply that these deviant young men become less rebellious as they got older, while, at the same time, as they came into positions of power they were able to affect the social rules around their deviant acts. However, in terms of the move from illegal to legal downloading, it is telling that the discourse of moral entrepreneurs has developed from its focus on the economic imperatives discussed above. Emblematic of this is the shift in tone of the ‘Music Matters’ campaign in the United Kingdom. The BPI claims it is driving this campaign (2012: 31). However, the website and social media content around the campaign makes no mention of this relationship. Instead, the campaign focuses on the simple message that music is important: it is what we fall in love to, it is what reminds us of our favourite memories, it is what helps us to celebrate and to forget our troubles. The campaign does not try to label music consumers as immoral for searching out unauthorised sources of music online but does provide a directory of legal sources and lists some of the benefits to music consumers – not just musicians or music companies – of legal downloading. Indeed, the campaign rarely discusses music consumption in terms of paying for music which, as we have seen, was the primary focus in previous attempts to educate music consumers from unauthorised file-sharing. Looked at through the labelling theory, this campaign suggests that moral entrepreneurs have moved on from the economic imperative and, in so doing, they have also moved on from the stalled social interaction that surrounded illegal downloading previously. While this might not be affecting all music consumers equally as Giesler (2008) points out, it is no surprise from the perspective of the labelling theory that it correlates with the shift from illegal to legal downloading that is reflected in industry sales figures. As such, it is questionable whether this move marks a

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victory for proponents of illegal downloading. In a sense, they have won the argument over who has the moral high ground but at the same time, they have lost the foundation for their justification of downloading illegally. That said, data are still inconclusive here. Certainly, the current trends make sense within the labelling theory; however, further research is needed to establish whether these trends mark a genuine sea change.

Summary In this article, I have presented illegal downloading as a deviant activity rather than an illegal one. In this task, my aim has not been to add to the discussion about the positive and negative effects of illegal downloading or even consider the motivations that lead consumers to download music from unauthorised sources in the first place. Instead, I have explored how consumers can knowingly break the law and consume a prohibited product when legal substitutes exist from the perspective of structured social interactions. We have seen that moral entrepreneurs have turned to formal laws and informal rules to stop people from downloading from unauthorised sources. They have labelled unauthorised file-sharing wrong even though nothing inherent in the act makes it so. They have used deterrence and education strategies in an attempt to ‘monetise a significant proportion of the illegal use of music’ (Taylor, 2008). These moral entrepreneurs point out that illegal downloaders are consumers of music who are no longer ‘abiding by the conventional rules of exchange’ (Taylor et al., 2002: 620). The social rule illegal downloaders are breaking is, put simply, getting ‘the most possible stuff for the least possible money’ at the expense of music industry profits (Condry, 2004: 348). Illegal downloaders, though, are able to turn this attack around by claiming that they are taking the commodification of music to its ultimate conclusion. They are becoming perfect consumers who get the most music while paying as little as possible. They also claim that music corporations themselves have twisted economic rules. The inconsistency of social rules, we might say, allows the justifications used to demonise a group to be turned back around on the demonisers. The labelling theory of deviance allows us to see how the attempts to monetise illegal downloading have provided a justification for illegal downloaders to continue. This analysis shares much with Giesler’s (2008) recent analyses of Napster – particularly his work on Napster as a spur for market evolution in the music industries. In this article, however, we have focused our attention on a different plot in this social drama – one where the symbiotic relationship between marketers and consumers does not lead to market evolution but rather gets in the way of it. As we have seen, some downloaders do not claim to be rebellious but instead see themselves as living out the morals enforced by moral entrepreneurs representing the formal music industry such as the BPI. In this case, attempts to bring deviants inside the market only serve to justify their position as outsiders. Giesler (2008: 751) hints at this added twist to the plot he sets out when he tells us that the ‘prospect that countercultures can adjust to corporate assimilation suggests a more complex process of market evolution’. We can now add some detail to this complexity. As we have seen, countercultural actors do not always adjust to market evolution. Sometimes they get into a position where it is impossible for them to be dragged inside. References Anderson, C. (2006) The Long Tail: How Endless Choice is Creating Unlimited Demand. London, UK: Random House. Becker, H.S. (1963) Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. New York, NY: the Free Press.

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