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Peter Thiel, Tech Billionaire, Reveals Secret War with Gawker

nytimes.com

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Re: Peter Thiel, Tech Billionaire, Reveals Secret War with Gawker

#171

Post by millstone »

zwerdlds wrote: post #105
Spooky23 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unpopular and distasteful speech is the entire purpose of press freedom and free speech. Keep in mind that while many people would agree with you that Gawker is scum, various communities take offense and find tasteless all sorts of other things. Freedom is either near absolute or useless.

Are you genuinely advocating the limitless disclosure of nude images of people, with no legal recourse to prevent that? Am I grossly misunderstanding this case?

The critique of Thiel is not about the particulars of this case. Say there was some absurd exculpatory event, like it comes out that Hogan paid Gawker to publish the video. It ultimately wouldn't matter: Thiel would continue to locate and fund lawsuits against Gawker.

The concern is that this is a generic strategy for destroying any media org you dislike. Simply locate and fund any and all lawsuits, forever. Any critical story could be libel. Any publishing of secrets could be an invasion of privacy. A weak case can be pumped up with enough money. Eventually the billionaire wins the war of attrition.

This is not hypothetical. Mother Jones was similarly attacked for publishing Mitt Romney's 47% comments. http://www.motherjones.com/media/2015/10/mother-jones-vander...

This is the very definition of a chilling effect on free speech!

Re: Peter Thiel, Tech Billionaire, Reveals Secret War with Gawker

#172

Post by millstone »

will_brown wrote: post #167
FireBeyond wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder whether Hogan/Bollea was advised by "his" counsel about the ramifications of dropping one of the pieces of litigation - a piece that would have increased the ability for Bollea to collect that damage award. As it happens the particular tort that was dropped was the only one that would allow Gawker to use their insurance to cover the liability of the verdict awarded. Thiel's goal is to destroy Gawker. A Gawke…

>...there are perfectly valid ethical questions about Thiel's involvement and motivations in this whole debacle. Your post basically reads like a law school ethics question/answer. You did a great job issue spotting. Law being one of the most highly regulated industries there are rules on point, so I can answer some of your questions. Here is how the Florida Rule of Professional Conduct reads "Rule 4-5.4(d): Exercise…

What if Thiel simply pays Bollea not to settle?

FTA: "He would not say whether he had compensated any of the people, including Mr. Bollea, which could raise questions in an appeal."

Re: Peter Thiel, Tech Billionaire, Reveals Secret War with Gawker

#173

Post by sanxiyn »

mikeyouse wrote: post #159
flashman wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good; there SHOULD be a chilling effect on publishing private material of the sort being litigated. There's a difference between 'what the public is interested in' and 'the public interest'.

So if it were a Donald Trump sex tape rather than a hulk Hogan one, should airing under a minute of it cost the NYTimes $150M?

Yes.

Re: Peter Thiel, Tech Billionaire, Reveals Secret War with Gawker

#174

Post by PhasmaFelis »

zorpner wrote: post #102
eudox wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep that in mind. And this court decision was not made on the basis of how repugnant, malicious or vicious Gawker or Nick Denton are. If Gawker goes bankrupt, it won't be because they're horrible people, it will be because they overstepped the bounds of the law.

No, it will be because a plutocrat decided to fund a lawsuit unrelated to his reason for disliking them (and apparently influenced the process of that lawsuit with the aim of destroying Gawker to the detriment of Bollea), and abused the inherent bias of our courts towards parties with disproportionate resources. Bollea may well have had a valid case against Gawker, but we'll never know. The idea that a case with a si…

> No, it will be because a plutocrat decided to fund a lawsuit unrelated to his reason for disliking them

It was directly related his reason for disliking them. In fact, it was practically the same reason.

> and apparently influenced the process of that lawsuit with the aim of destroying Gawker to the detriment of Bollea

How so? Bollea was already a millionaire; he didn't need the money, and he wasn't materially damaged in any case. He wasn't going after Gawker for the payout; he wanted to see them punished for what they did to him, and dissuaded from doing it to anyone else. This outcome serves his interests much better than a bit of extra money would.

Re: Peter Thiel, Tech Billionaire, Reveals Secret War with Gawker

#175

Post by Natsu »

millstone wrote: post #172
will_brown wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>...there are perfectly valid ethical questions about Thiel's involvement and motivations in this whole debacle. Your post basically reads like a law school ethics question/answer. You did a great job issue spotting. Law being one of the most highly regulated industries there are rules on point, so I can answer some of your questions. Here is how the Florida Rule of Professional Conduct reads "Rule 4-5.4(d): Exercise…

What if Thiel simply pays Bollea not to settle? FTA: "He would not say whether he had compensated any of the people, including Mr. Bollea, which could raise questions in an appeal."

It's Bollea's rights that would be violated, so he's the one to decide such. I highly doubt he will given the circumstances.

That's why I can't take seriously anyone other than him suggesting such.

Re: Peter Thiel, Tech Billionaire, Reveals Secret War with Gawker

#176

Post by EdiX »

RockyMcNuts wrote: post #68
eudox wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The free press" is rather a grandiose title for a rag like Gawker. If Gawker counts as part of "the free press" -- the people Americans trust with the privilege of mediating their access to much information -- then yes, "the press" deserves whatever it gets.

"Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you're really in favor of free speech, then you're in favor of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise. Otherwise, you're not in favor of free speech."

I agree 100% but is someone else's sex tape speech? It doesn't inform the public of anything it needed to know and it doesn't express an opinion.

Re: Peter Thiel, Tech Billionaire, Reveals Secret War with Gawker

#177

Post by mikeyouse »

sanxiyn wrote: post #173
mikeyouse wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if it were a Donald Trump sex tape rather than a hulk Hogan one, should airing under a minute of it cost the NYTimes $150M?

Yes.

That is a terrifying mentality. Should Romney have been able to sue about his 47% comments? Why is everyone so content to march into fascism?

Re: Peter Thiel, Tech Billionaire, Reveals Secret War with Gawker

#178

Post by wpietri »

Natsu wrote: post #77
lazaroclapp wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know enough about the case at hand to comment specifically, but arguing that it is always fair to use "augmenting the resources of someone with a legitimate legal claim" as a tactic is not uncontroversial in the general case. Keep in mind that selectively punishing common legal violations is a common censorship tactic in many places. Consider this case in Mexico: "On 12 March 2015, two journalists from MVS, D…

> arguing that it is always fair to use "augmenting the resources of someone with a legitimate legal claim" as a tactic is not uncontroversial in the general case. In which specific cases is it illegitimate? The only answer I've been able to come up with is "when you don't like the person or cause." I mean, if anyone wants to condemn the general case, please remember that you'll be condemning the EFF, ACLU and many s…

> He could not have done anything at all to them if the cases were not meritorious.

That's not true at all. One jury verdict (before appeals have been heard) plus a bunch of nascent suits is no proof of eventual merit. It could be that every single one of those cases eventually ends up getting dismissed, or being awarded negligible verdicts. But because Gawker may not be able to afford a full defense, they could well be out of business.

Long-time financial journalist Felix Salmon points out the issues here:

https://twitter.com/felixsalmon/status/735662530903826437

You also write like somebody who has never been on the receiving end of a lawsuit. They are a painful multi-year distraction and expense even if you win. My mom was on the receiving end of a lawsuit after a business deal gone bad. Eventually she won on all counts, and after he had finished reading his verdict, the judge gave both the plaintiff and the plaintiff's lawyer a royal dressing down for wasting the court's time. But the stress was incredible for the whole family, and we still had to pay the defense bills. It was not cheap.

And in Gawker's case, defending themselves against $10m worth of lawyering could well take them at least $10m no matter the outcome of the cases. News is not a business rolling in money; publishers go out of business every day even without being forced to burn unlimited millions. I can and will seriously argue that Gawker will be unable to afford defense lawyers long before Thiel will be unable afford lawyers playing offense.

Re: Peter Thiel, Tech Billionaire, Reveals Secret War with Gawker

#179

Post by eridius »

millstone wrote: post #171
zwerdlds wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you genuinely advocating the limitless disclosure of nude images of people, with no legal recourse to prevent that? Am I grossly misunderstanding this case?

The critique of Thiel is not about the particulars of this case. Say there was some absurd exculpatory event, like it comes out that Hogan paid Gawker to publish the video. It ultimately wouldn't matter: Thiel would continue to locate and fund lawsuits against Gawker. The concern is that this is a generic strategy for destroying any media org you dislike. Simply locate and fund any and all lawsuits, forever. Any crit…

And yet the alternative is to allow vile publications like Gawker to continue to cause damage to the general public without anyone able to stand up to them.

It's also important to point out that Thiel is not manufacturing bogus cases to try and overwhelm a company with lawsuits. He's trying to find legitimate victims of Gawker and fund their lawsuits. These aren't frivolous claims, they're merely claims that the victims may not have been able to afford to file otherwise.

Re: Peter Thiel, Tech Billionaire, Reveals Secret War with Gawker

#180

Post by EdiX »

simula67 wrote: post #153
pkinsky wrote: post #4

>He added: “It’s not for me to decide what happens to Gawker. If America rallies around Gawker and decides we want more people to be outed and more sex tapes to be posted without consent, then they will find a way to save Gawker, and I can’t stop it.” An important reminder of exactly what conduct, on Gawker's part, people are defending. They have no moral high ground, noble principles, or higher purpose. They're scum…

Also don't forget that the incident involved publishing his racist rants which destroyed his career.

It didn't. His racist rant was published by the National Enquirer three years after Gawker leaked his sex tape.
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