No matter who wins, we lose

This WSJ editorial is a piece of work. Is it really necessary to be wrong about all of culture and capitalism, just so you can be wrong about filesharing? I love the casual shinkick against judicial activism followed directly by unusually crude advocacy of it. Please deliver a distributed drubbing in comments, if inclined. (Link via A&L Daily.)

I'm going to watch "Alien vs. Predator" instead. I have a scholarly interest, I assure. I taught "Alien" last semester and read quite a bit about the - ahem (cough, cough) - Quadrilogy. What do you think: how bad is AVP? Is it worse than the WSJ editorial, for example? How can one decide a thing like that?

UPDATE: Wow, that AVP thing made no more sense than the WSJ thing.

Comments

[Kip Manley]

I suppose you could go at it from a purely utilitarian view. What is the purpose of AvP? What is the purpose of the WSJ editorial? Which best fulfills its purpose? You might could adjust for æsthetics, but I imagine the WSJ's CGI budget is much smaller than Fox's. Not exactly a fair fight, there.

(I wonder: does Mr. Henninger conscientiously drop a dollar into the hat of every street busker he happens to overhear? —How about the mimes?)

[Han]

For someone who write for the Wall Street Journal, Henninger sounds remarkably like an ignorant asshat who knows nothing about economics.

[Matt Weiner]

I'm really not sure that quoting Motown artists is the best thing to do when arguing that lack of royalty income will destroy innovation.

This isn't remotely the worst Henninger can do.

And Han, as I understand that's pretty much the job description for the WSJ editorial pages. The news pages are run separately.

[cw]

OK, I'm dumb. Someone--perferably Mr. Holbo-- tell me what was wrong with that editorial.

[Tim]

The editorial was all bullshit.

AVP, OTOH, had that scene where the predator fights the alien. THAT was wicked hardcore.

[joe o]

It is possible for someone to write a logical essay defending the conclusions Henninger makes. Henninger's essay is just confused.

Tim is right. The editorial is bullshit. The extended imaginary story in the first two paragraphs is particularly bad example of a particularly bad columnist cliche. The use of examples is just tone deaf; Who the fuck cares about PodWave external speakers?

He also makes weird factual errors. There is no way "Allofmp3" is as popular as filesharing networks.

[JP]

The editorial was all bullshit.

Heh. But if you guys are trying to quote Joe Pesci's opening statement in My Cousin Vinny, the precise wording of the line is, "Everything that guy just said is bullshit." To my surprise, I don't think I've ever seen that quote used as a blog post title before.