Earlier quoted context omitted.
The ACLU has no standing to sue over teaching evolution in schools. The NAACP has no standing to sue over school segregation. In all these cases, powerful people with interest in a case decided to assist people who did have standing. Do you oppose that practice in all these cases?
The ACLU and NAACP are non-profits that are supported by a large number of members, publicly report their spending, and are governed by leaders chosen through a democratic process. When they back a lawsuit, they are very transparent about it. What Peter Thiel did was secretly fund a lawsuit by someone else in order to exact revenge (or depending on your point of view, to provide a service to society). I think there i…
Gawker Files for Bankruptcy, Will Be Put Up for Auction
421–430 of 566 posts
Re: Gawker Files for Bankruptcy, Will Be Put Up for Auction
#422Earlier quoted context omitted.
The ACLU has no standing to sue over teaching evolution in schools. The NAACP has no standing to sue over school segregation. In all these cases, powerful people with interest in a case decided to assist people who did have standing. Do you oppose that practice in all these cases?
The ACLU and NAACP are non-profits that are supported by a large number of members, publicly report their spending, and are governed by leaders chosen through a democratic process. When they back a lawsuit, they are very transparent about it. What Peter Thiel did was secretly fund a lawsuit by someone else in order to exact revenge (or depending on your point of view, to provide a service to society). I think there i…
So if Peter Thiel teamed up with Pax Dickinson and Justine Sacco, funded the non-profit "Screw You Gawker" organization which then funded Bollea's lawsuit, that would be acceptable?
Re: Gawker Files for Bankruptcy, Will Be Put Up for Auction
#423Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn't say they're equivalent. I find a private, rich entity shutting down a media company much scarier than a media company publishing facts.
How about a wealthy media company acting in a way that exposes them to liability, relying the inability of those they have victimized to seek redress?
I'm not saying Gawker is a martyr here.
But if you haven't, you really ought to read Benedict Evans piece on this:
> Again, though, Thiel has already won. He is fabulously wealthy and extremely influential, and say what you will about Gawker, the liberal democracy that made it possible for the companies Thiel has built and invested in to emerge depends on a free press; driving a publication to bankruptcy via lawyer fees may be legal by the letter of the law, and even deserved on a personal level, but it is in absolute violation of the spirit of the law and, I might add, a rather hypocritical — or is it ironic? — use of government by the avowed libertarian Thiel. What are more concerning, though — and implicit in this concern is a critique of libertarianism — are the second and third-order effects of Thiel’s approach.
> The most obvious second-order effect is that, as Felix Salmon writes, Thiel is providing a blueprint for the suppression of the press by the wealthy. But what concerns me — and what ought to concern Thiel, and all of the Silicon Valley elites celebrating his actions — are the third order effects. Specifically, Thiel’s actions are bringing into stark relief the fundamental weakness of old analog businesses like journalism relative to the incredible power and strength of the technology sector, and if companies follow Thiel’s example, the freedom that makes the emergence of said companies possible could quickly come under threat — and deservedly so.
Re: Gawker Files for Bankruptcy, Will Be Put Up for Auction
#424Earlier quoted context omitted.
(3) is proof positive the absence or presence of funds has too much influence on the outcome of court cases. If all that stands between a judgment one way or the other is a pile of cash then effectively there is no such thing as justice and this means that more often than not the party with the smallest bank account will lose. I'm fine with the concept of 'maintenance' but at the same time I feel that there is such a…
Exactly -- the problem is that our civil litigation's "truth-finding procedure" is so vulnerable to financial influence. Asking how to "keep people from spending money on lawyers" is the wrong approach; the system's process needs to be robust against such asymmetric investment. [1] People forget that proper civil litigation is a public good (in the economic sense). Ensuring that (civil) wrongdoers pay for their actio…
>the problem is that our civil litigation's "truth-finding procedure" is so vulnerable to financial influence
Do you have any scientific research backing this? Or just anecdotal evidence?
Re: Gawker Files for Bankruptcy, Will Be Put Up for Auction
#425Earlier quoted context omitted.
The ACLU has no standing to sue over teaching evolution in schools. The NAACP has no standing to sue over school segregation. In all these cases, powerful people with interest in a case decided to assist people who did have standing. Do you oppose that practice in all these cases?
The ACLU and NAACP are non-profits that are supported by a large number of members, publicly report their spending, and are governed by leaders chosen through a democratic process. When they back a lawsuit, they are very transparent about it. What Peter Thiel did was secretly fund a lawsuit by someone else in order to exact revenge (or depending on your point of view, to provide a service to society). I think there i…
Rather than just relying on what you think, you would need to propose a legal framework that can actually be enforced, for distinguishing between the two. Because it is legally ambiguous.
Because if your framework becomes "non-profit that publicly reports spending is okay," what's to stop a billionaire from donating millions to their own non-profit, governed by a bunch of their "elected" friends (membership fee = $1M)? Now you can expect a bunch of lawsuits over that question!
Re: Gawker Files for Bankruptcy, Will Be Put Up for Auction
#426Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What about that video of Mitt Romney at a private campaign event, where he said some horrible stuff about poor people? For the record, he didn't say anything horrible about poor people. What he said was: > There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who belie…
He did say bad stuff about poor people though. He incorrectly assumed that 47% of the US population will never take personal responsibility. When you're taped stating that you are not even going to try to help 47% of the population because of a stereotype I think that people have a valid point to be upset about.
>He incorrectly assumed that 47% of the US population will never take personal responsibility.
How do you know that he was incorrect?
Re: Gawker Files for Bankruptcy, Will Be Put Up for Auction
#427Gawker 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…
How about the opposite precedent? The idea that if your adversaries don't have money, you can seemingly publish whatever you like (legality and morality be damned) knowing they can't afford to sue you/defeat your large legal team? The only thing stopping Gawker being crushed before was the fact it had a multi million dollar corporation behind it, and was happy to flat out ignore any complaints they didn't like. Now s…
Well put. I think a silent majority of journalists are thinking this while their less introspective colleagues reduce the situation to David vs Goliath.
I'm with David Friedman on this.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/06/05/ot51-alien-vs-threadato...
Making tort claims marketable solves multiple problems:
1. The tort victim who can’t afford a lawyer. He may be able to get a law firm to take the case for a share of the award, but …
2. How does he know which law firm will do a good job, which do a bad job, which sell him out for some covert payment? If he can sell his claim, all he needs to know is which firm offers him the highest price.
I know some liberals think libertarians are gaga for markets but it seems like this would serve their egalitarian goals as well. Personally I had never considered the potential for the first point but now it seems obvious.
Re: Gawker Files for Bankruptcy, Will Be Put Up for Auction
#428Earlier quoted context omitted.
We have limits on speech when it comes to private information. Should "free speech" allow gawker to publish a private citizen's sex tape? There is no "in the public interest" argument to apply here.
Ues there is - hogan is a public figure who is involved in politics and has repeatedly announced his conservative/be faithful/young-people-have-loose-morals bullshit. Hence cheating on his wife was news, the public should have been informed, and unlike that fappening this wasnt stolen.
Cheating on his wife may have been news (I disagree, but just for the sake of argument let's say that's true). The gratuitous porn video was in every way NOT news.
A news organization should not have the right to publish a sex tape to establish dubious morality. It also should not have the right to publish Hogan taking a straining shit if he appeared previously in a hemorrhoid commercial.
There are standards in civilized society.
Re: Gawker Files for Bankruptcy, Will Be Put Up for Auction
#429Earlier quoted context omitted.
they didn't say anything bad about Thiel, the reason he went after them is because they outted him as gay.
Incorrect, that's his sub-excuse. The actual reason is because of Valleywag reporting on e.g. his embarrassing failure of a hedge fund.
Please don't post drive-by insinuations to HN. If you know something, back it up. But please don't lower the quality of discourse here by making things up.
Re: Gawker Files for Bankruptcy, Will Be Put Up for Auction
#430>kotaku Hopefully Gawker's demise will wipe out Kotaku forever as well. Whatever your views on the GamerGate movement (I certainly don't like what it has turned into thanks to /pol/), the corruption and collusion of Kotaku "journalists" is disgusting and unacceptable.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11878202 and marked it off-topic.