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Gawker Files for Bankruptcy, Will Be Put Up for Auction

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Re: Gawker Files for Bankruptcy, Will Be Put Up for Auction

#141

Post by mikeyouse »

FireBeyond wrote: post #132
mikeyouse wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's precisely what Thiel's doing though -- He just hit the jackpot with the Hogan amount. He's also funding several other suits against Gawker including one from someone who claimed to have invented email. He's like a terrible patent troll for journalism. The Gizmodo article that Thiel thinks is worth suing Gawker over: http://gizmodo.com/5887480/the-inventor-of-email-did-not-inv...

What jackpot? They could have gotten the insurance payout. Except they dropped that part of the suit specifically so Gawker could not use the insurance it had purchased for this reason.

The jackpot in the sense that Thiel's goal was to litigate Gawker into bankruptcy and the Hogan case played out perfectly for him.

Re: Gawker Files for Bankruptcy, Will Be Put Up for Auction

#143

Post by matthewowen »

cloakandswagger wrote: post #103
danso wrote: post #65

Sad in a way. AFAIK, Gawker is not only one of the few independent online media companies (VICE/Vox/BuzzFeed/BusinessInsider are heavily funded/owned by massive media conglomerates), it was one of the few media companies period making a healthy profit: http://www.politico.com/media/story/2016/06/gawkers-pre-hoga... > The company’s revenue had grown from about $5.3 million in 2006 to $43.8 million in 2014. It was cons…

I find it kind of perverse to champion a company based solely on their profitability. Gawker was a profitable media company because they were one of the the only ones debased enough to resort to muckraking for their tasteless, voyeuristic audiences. Good riddance, I say.

Why are you using "muckraking" as a negative term?

Re: Gawker Files for Bankruptcy, Will Be Put Up for Auction

#144

Post by sofaofthedamned »

FireBeyond wrote: post #116
GrumpyYoungMan wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Precedent this sets"? I think "Don't publish a illegally made video of people in a private moment or ignore court orders to take down the video." to be a rather positive precedent, don't you? That's the sort of chilling effect on media we should all be applauding. Thief merely funded a court battle that had merit (in this case, quite a lot of merit) that Bollea probably could have won on his own. I fail to see what…

Yes, and Gawker had purchased insurance to deal with the ramifications of their actions. Bollea's lawyers, as funded by Thiel, then decided to specifically drop the claim that would allow the damages payout to have been made from insurance. That's fairly vindictive. Especially given Thiel's motive that "they outed me" - come on, Thiel's sexuality was probably the worst kept secret in the Valley. When you pose shirtle…

Just out of interest - insurance may not have saved them. I have liability insurance etc but it's capped at £2 million. I doubt any corporate insurance plan for Gawker would be uncapped, so they may well have still gone under.

Re: Gawker Files for Bankruptcy, Will Be Put Up for Auction

#146

Post by rs999gti »

FireBeyond wrote: post #116
GrumpyYoungMan wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Precedent this sets"? I think "Don't publish a illegally made video of people in a private moment or ignore court orders to take down the video." to be a rather positive precedent, don't you? That's the sort of chilling effect on media we should all be applauding. Thief merely funded a court battle that had merit (in this case, quite a lot of merit) that Bollea probably could have won on his own. I fail to see what…

Yes, and Gawker had purchased insurance to deal with the ramifications of their actions. Bollea's lawyers, as funded by Thiel, then decided to specifically drop the claim that would allow the damages payout to have been made from insurance. That's fairly vindictive. Especially given Thiel's motive that "they outed me" - come on, Thiel's sexuality was probably the worst kept secret in the Valley. When you pose shirtle…

> Especially given Thiel's motive that "they outed me" - come on, Thiel's sexuality was probably the worst kept secret in the Valley. When you pose shirtless on a gay cruise, I think it's fairly safe the rest of the world didn't need Valleywag to tell them of your homosexuality.

Does all that evidence matter? Shouldn't it be up to Theil when and where he outs himself instead of blog like Valleywag doing it for him?

Re: Gawker Files for Bankruptcy, Will Be Put Up for Auction

#147

Post by olliej »

whack wrote: post #54

Libel and slander have no place in a functioning democracy. By building an entire business model around such practices, Gawker is not only spreading disinformation, it is also crowding out more reputable news sources that could have better helped inform the public. The only criticism I can give in this entire tale, is that it shouldn't take a billionaire to sue and win judgement against slanderous publishers. Such re…

And engadget and kotaku and most of the other tech related websites you probably read.

Also its a good lesson to other sites to police content to ensure no one says anything bad about billionaires.

Thank god for thiel protecting us from horrible things like censorship!

Re: Gawker Files for Bankruptcy, Will Be Put Up for Auction

#148

Post by xwowsersx »

nostromo wrote: post #18

Gawker may have been terrible, but we should all be a bit concerned at the precedent this sets. It's sort of like defending the free speech of terrible groups like the KKK. We do it because we treasure free speech, not because we support the KKK. I generally have positive feelings about Thiel, but his actions here make me very uneasy. I worry that the aristocracy will now use this method to try and close down unfavor…

You're making a common mistake here about free speech. Free speech in the First Amendment is a restriction on the government, not individuals. The reason we treasure it so much is because of the history of government's in Europe and elsewhere restricting the speech of individuals. Having experienced the perils of government censorship themselves, the Framers put this into the Constitution. Free speech has never meant "You have a right to say anything you want without consequences".

Re: Gawker Files for Bankruptcy, Will Be Put Up for Auction

#149

Post by mikeyouse »

GunboatDiplomat wrote: post #131
aab0 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thiel's plan was exactly to wear down Gawker by frivolous lawsuits until either they collapsed or he lucked out; that's why his legal team was searching through thousands of articles looking for people they could contact to drum up a case or fund an existing case, including the 'father of email' case. Court cases are not deterministic noise-free processes.

How is this different than the ACLU looking for an ideal test case for a civil rights issue?

The ACLU typically expands rights and free speech while this is somewhere on the opposite side of the spectrum.

Re: Gawker Files for Bankruptcy, Will Be Put Up for Auction

#150

Post by pmichaud »

smt88 wrote: post #72
whack wrote: post #54

Libel and slander have no place in a functioning democracy. By building an entire business model around such practices, Gawker is not only spreading disinformation, it is also crowding out more reputable news sources that could have better helped inform the public. The only criticism I can give in this entire tale, is that it shouldn't take a billionaire to sue and win judgement against slanderous publishers. Such re…

> Libel and slander have no place in a functioning democracy One man's libel/slander is another man's investigate journalism ("muckraking" in the US). In this particular case, Gawker wasn't guilty of either libel or slander because they didn't publish anything about Hogan that was false. > it shouldn't take a billionaire to sue and win judgement against slanderous publishers It's actually much harder to win a libel/s…

I don't think that poster is talking about Hogan.
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