I take a majority of this way of thinking from Alain Badiou: the truth procedures of music and the truth procedures of science. What is most interesting to me is that a truth procedure of polity is _seemingly_ determined by the historical presentation of file sharing software and music. I should hope that my arguments do not justify theft, though I may be led astray by my own constructions of thought. But what I am most concerned here is with White's role played as a militant, within the political theatre of piracy; by Badiou, she would be considered a "militant of truth" I believe. One who compels who to witness a "rupture" of the system which _presents_ such a militant. Her superior's condemnation, to me, presents something that might be expected: that we should be compelled by a _person_ to deal with these abstractions which have happened upon our political drama.
People do have a personal responsibility, but at the same time, "personal responsibility" is a function of an social structure. I do not mean to address any "casual" but rather "semantic" description of this "responsibility." What connections (political, historical, etc.) immediately can be drawn from our _decision_ (rather than hypothesis or principle) that White is "wrong"? One conclusion is "education"; but one problem is that a society may very well believe that stealing is "right," like ours. How _might_ one present a counter-indoctrination? From their perspective, this may be how it is presented. We have had decades to mature the ideologies, I believe we are now at a time where we must accept that fact. Some of these ideologies are inherently confrontational. Calling it theft does not entail that any particular action should follow, so it seems that in the absence of one, we might inevitably decide, produce such a _decision_, what those actions should be. I should hope that I am prompting such a discussion.
It _is_ theft. But it is theft born out of a period that allowed dogmatisim to mature.
This "historical" argument is the same argument that people use to explain all manner of social ills. It's a cop out. It was wrong historically to steal and it's wrong now. People have a personal responsibility, it isn't societies fault that this girl is a thief.