New Digital Technologies: Privacy/Property, Globalization & Law • 437 New Digital Technologies: Privacy/Property, Globalization, and Law MATTHEW DAVID * AND J AMIESON KIRKHOPE * ABSTRACT This paper addresses attempts to locate and dislocate music audiences in the context of global commercial, legal, and tech- nical developments. The 2001 legal decision against Napster in the United States found the file share service company guilty of copyright infringement. This precedent appeared to sup- port the recording industry. However, such legal frames have been bypassed by new softwares. Supporters see such global networks of sharing and distribution as undoing corporate con- trol. The recording industry has responded with parallel claims of having encryption and surveillance technologies capable of globally reregulating property. However, as this article shows, there is no technical necessity and that total freedom and to- tal enforcement are impossible. Just as globalization is reified into an inevitable process of deregulation in one instance and at the next moment it is reified into an indispensable regu- latory regime, so new electronic media and global electronic networks promote neither regulation or deregulation, except in so far as the balance of social forces at any one time interprets and enacts them in such ways. Introduction and Background When the Ninth Circuit Court judges in the United States decided on February 12, 2001, that the Internet music share service Napster should * School of Sociology, Politics and Law, University of Plymouth, Plymouth United Kingdom. Perspectives on Global Development and Technology, Volume 3, issue 4  2004 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden