OT: Gawker files bankruptcy
- Thread starter Scarlet_Scourge
- Start date
Whatchu gonna do brother when the largest arms in the world run wild on you?
This isn't good news
Peter Thiel demostrated that if you put enough money behind lawsuits you can bankrupt your personal enemies. That isn't a good thing.
While you as an individual may dislike Gawker only a moron would judge this kind of action based on who you personally like. Just as when a the Westboro Baptist goes before the court to defend their free speech rights, your rights are being defended as well; when a billionaire can use his wealth to run a campaign of lawsuits to silence an enemy, anyone can be silenced. Hogan is a pitiful pawn and those celebrating, celebrate in ignorance.
Peter Thiel demostrated that if you put enough money behind lawsuits you can bankrupt your personal enemies. That isn't a good thing.
While you as an individual may dislike Gawker only a moron would judge this kind of action based on who you personally like. Just as when a the Westboro Baptist goes before the court to defend their free speech rights, your rights are being defended as well; when a billionaire can use his wealth to run a campaign of lawsuits to silence an enemy, anyone can be silenced. Hogan is a pitiful pawn and those celebrating, celebrate in ignorance.
Disagree. Gawker is the poster child for what happens when your media company gets hooked on crack, moves into the gutter and becomes a dirty, dirty whore who lives to get filled (with pageviews). Why the hell would any semi-respectable media outlet publish a homemade porn tape, outside of straight-up whoring for eyeballs and dollars? Gawker let that mentality permeate its entire network, turning what were once respectable sites into steamed garbage. Blow it to rubble.
Free speech ain't setting up hidden cameras and filming people without their knowledge, then blasting it all over the internet. Gawker got what it deserved. The fact that it happen to such pricks is just icing on the cake.
I'm a huge free speech advocate, but I don't feel comfortable defending Gawker on free speech. This is a business that has made its profit off of exposing the privacy of other people and then laughing at them...people who are often time NOT public figures. That's not the same as free speech. The jury award for the Hogan case was way too high and will likely be reduced, but it's not hard to see why the jury did it...they felt they were speaking not just for one guy but for a number of people who were wronged.
I worked in local TV a number of years ago and I was always amazed at who callously our station and others treated privacy...trespassing to get a good shot, putting people on tv without their permission, etc. It would be nice to see this trigger a larger discussion about the rights of individuals vs the media in general.
I worked in local TV a number of years ago and I was always amazed at who callously our station and others treated privacy...trespassing to get a good shot, putting people on tv without their permission, etc. It would be nice to see this trigger a larger discussion about the rights of individuals vs the media in general.
You are demonstrating the moron component of the reaction. Peter Thiel doesn't care about Hogan. This was just one of several cases he funded. He had a vendetta against gawker and laid out a blueprint on how the super rich can silence critics by secretly funding a series of lawsuits against an enemy.
Here is a story for which you will surely find sympathy with the defendant.
http://www.indystar.com/story/news/...-printer-then-he-sued-indiana-30000/85219140/
It is a parallel to how Thuel used the legal system to go after someone. For the risk this situation puts journalists who are not sleazy like Gawker, this case exposes them to risk that is just as frightening.
Peter Thiel didn't make the judgement. That was the court of law. All Thiel did was empower Hogan to pursue the case. If Thiel had the power you're talking about, why didn't he bankrupt Gawker over the original, vendetta-inspiring article a decade ago? Because he had no case?
So I guess trampling privacy is okay so long as your target doesn't have the money to pursue damages?
If those non-sleazy journalists don't do things that will incur judgements against them, then they have no reason to be frightened.
Your being overly alarmist. I trust the jury to make the right decision in free speech cases, they usually do. Sure, Theil funded the case in a vendetta, but he won on the merits. And thing about all of the people that Gawker harmed that were unable to sue because they didn't have the finances....some of whom were talked about during the Hogan case. Read about those and see what sympathy you feel.....
Why is it wrong for a billionaire to fund a plaintiff's legal team (fund it, not buy off the judge/jury) but it's okay for a corporation worth billions to spend millions defending itself against perfectly legitimate lawsuits from regular people paying their lawyer thousands?
You present a false choice. I'm not endorsing one in favor of another. Because of money and power people don't go to court on equal footing. That is why when someone like Bill Clinton, Bill Cosby, or Kobe Bryant rapes someone they don't have to endure the charge of rape.
Doesn't that argue for the need to have someone underwrite the cost of litigation for an individual against a much richer corporation? Even someone somwhat wealthy like Hulk Hogan couldn't individually afford to take on a corporation like Gawker, that has more than 10 times his resources.
Gawker while wealthier than Hogan isn't a ground shaker thus the bankruptcy. Compared to Thiel Gawker is a gerbil and Hogan a mouse in the presence of a hippo.
This article gives an overview of what affect this can have on the role the press has in our society.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-...ker-battle-could-open-a-war-against-the-press
We have a press that largely for societal benefit can target people who are in power and in the public eye. If that were to change and a guy like Thiel who is a flesh and blood incarnation of the most insanely radical Ayn Rand worshipping libertarian douche nozzle, were to be empowered with protection that was in essence a product of his wealth he or any other proxy would be able to silence the press from exposing people because the threat of this kind would be crippling to an industry that has limited and shrinking profit poential, and is almost completely advertising dependent.
In a more concrete example. Imagine there is a journalist who finds out that a sports program that is particularly popular with the hive mind has been covering up rape. A key element is that a coach was recorded acting out a role play rape fantasy with a prostitute that demostrated that the coach knew about a rape that he claimed not know about until after the time of the recording.
Now imagine this school has a loyal booster who owns 20 percent of a top 50 company and has a reputation for using the courts to challenge any bad press against the school. Knowing what Thiel did to Gawker no one would tell the story unless they and their employer were willing to put their jobs and company's solvency at risk.
The freedom of our press is extremely important to me and I do not want reporting on the misdeeds of the powerful to be limited to those who are willing to risk everything. If the Sullivan standard is overturned and the counter suit doesn't conclude that Thiel committed tortious interference, the rich and powerful will be even more insulated from the consequences of their misdeeds than they already are.
The thing about rights and the justice system is that if you want to preserve them you have get in the habit of defending scumbags. No one is going to piss on their rights and leave yours in tact.
Theil can have a vendetta, so what? They outted the guy. He has a right to. Theil didn't set up hidden cameras and put the footage on his site. Gawker did. Theil just helped them get what they deserve. He has every right to spend his money however the hell he wants. It just so happens that in this case he bankrupted people that a jury thought should be.
And that award isn't getting lowered now.
Your example has nothing to do with this case. Let people sue for nothing and they will get counter sued. Setting up hidden cameras in a private setting isn't free speech or freedom of press. No one wants to preserve what Gawker did.
Three times you have given the impression that you think Gawker filmed the video and set up hidden cameras. This is not true. Todd Clem, AKA Bubba The Love Sponge made the recording. He was not assisted by Gawker in any way, contrary to what happened in the Erin Andrews case. He claimed it was his wife but ended up paying Hogan 5k as an invasion of privacy penalty.
I think that all of your concerns are legitimate, and yet as pointed out above, they do not apply to this case. Gawker went over the line..over and over. WAY over the line. This is not only wrong, it is also damaging to good journalism. What should concern people is how powerless so many people were to do anything about it, and how long it took. To borrow a quote I saw yesterday from NYU professor Scott Galloway: "The legal shit-kicking Gawker is receiving is both warranted and overdue."
Of course that shouldn't happen. I just have no idea how your example fits here. Thiel didn't try to buy Gawker only to gather up all the reporters, put them in a dark basement and prohibit them from reporting on anything he didn't want them to report.
If Hogan was sitting on $20 million in cash to fight his case, and Thiel was never involved, everyone would likely be in the exact same position they're in today.
My opinion:
Who pays for the lawyers doesn't have anything to do with a lawsuit being valid or not.
All too often lawsuits are lost because the plaintiff can't afford to see his/her case
go through the whole process because the defendant can afford to keep the case in limbo so the plaintiff exhausts his/her financial resources and has to stop fighting or accept a settlement that he/she wouldn't have if they had the funding to keep on fighting .
Hogan was lucky to have someone willing to finance his lawsuit because they disliked/hated gawker, but that money only allowed him to fight, the way his lawyer presented the facts is why Hogan won, Theil only gave him the opportunity.
Who pays for the lawyers doesn't have anything to do with a lawsuit being valid or not.
All too often lawsuits are lost because the plaintiff can't afford to see his/her case
go through the whole process because the defendant can afford to keep the case in limbo so the plaintiff exhausts his/her financial resources and has to stop fighting or accept a settlement that he/she wouldn't have if they had the funding to keep on fighting .
Hogan was lucky to have someone willing to finance his lawsuit because they disliked/hated gawker, but that money only allowed him to fight, the way his lawyer presented the facts is why Hogan won, Theil only gave him the opportunity.
Would love to see that happen to all the media sites that engage in coverage like Breitbart and Gawker do.
No it was a personal vendetta Theil had against gawker because of the way it treated him, but that doesn't mean Hogan didn't deserve to win his case.
Just that Theil wanted a way to get at gawker and found it by backing Hogan lawsuit.
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