Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Gawker Files for Bankruptcy, Will Be Put Up for Auction

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

511–520 of 566 posts

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

#511

Post by rayiner »

jacquesm wrote: post #505
rayiner wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And that's true enough for me. But it's not true as a general proposition, nor are you excluding an irrelevant class of litigation. Much (most?) commercial litigation is between well-funded parties (e.g. a big company and it's insurer). > Interesting report, thank you for the link. I think 90% in and of itself is high enough to warrant scrutiny The government should only bring a lawsuit if it looks at the evidence…

> To the contrary, 90% is about right. The government should only be bringing lawsuits if it has a good faith belief it can establish the facts beyond a reasonable doubt. BRD is about 90-95% probability. There is a huge fallacy underlying your numbers. 90% is about right if the number of false convictions is acceptably low. 90% is a terrible number if it should contain a large number of false convictions. The 'establ…

> 90% is about right if the number of false convictions is acceptably low. 90% is a terrible number if it should contain a large number of false convictions.

Sure. But you implied above that a 90% conviction rate warrants more scrutiny than a 75% conviction rate. To the contrary, a 90% conviction rate may be indicative of a fair process. A 75% conviction rate is definitely indicative of an unfair process.

Obviously you still need to scrutinize the rate of false convictions. But that's true regardless of the conviction rate. Indeed, a low conviction rate suggests that the government is bringing marginal cases and trying to make things "stick" which increases the risk of false convictions.

> Some will claim this is efficiency but I don't really feel comfortable with an 'efficient' process that places large numbers of people in lock-up.

The U.S. has a large number of people in prison because it imposes long prison sentences for some very common and easy-to-prove things: drug sales, auto theft, assault, firearms. If you take a random sampling of federal convictions, you'll see that almost always there is a laundry list of physical evidence of guilt. The government doesn't bring marginal cases.

The solution to the prison problem is not to force all these clear-cut cases to go to trial. It's to stop imposing 20-year prison sentences for people selling a few pills of Oxycontin, or stop putting felons back in prison for 10 years just for having a gun.

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

#512

Post by xentronium »

splouk wrote: post #79
baldfat wrote: post #5

Messed up lawsuit and I actually don't know what to think. 1) Gawker was garbage dwelling story makers. I am glad they aren't going to do stories anymore. 2) Who will it be the next time something happens like this will it be a actual journalist and good content producer that gets sued to death? Scared for journalist???? Also would be nice to see LifeHacker survive this.

This wouldn't happen to a good journalist because a good journalist wouldn't publish a stolen sex tape.

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist.

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

#513

Post by slg »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #507
lmm wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. (But I do think the right to tasteless speech is important and worth defending)

Ah, my question is ambiguous between "showing the Mohammed cartoons would be in bad taste" and "showing the Mohammed cartoons can't be allowed because it would be in bad taste". So let me make some points myself: 1. Publishing the cartoons themselves makes a variety of statements that can't be made by reporting on their existence without showing them. 2. Those statements have great value, independent of any questions…

You are viewing this wrong because it isn't about tastelessness. It is about infringing on the rights of others. Publishing the Mohammed comic isn't infringing on anyone's rights (at least in the US with our strong freedom of speech and lack of federal blasphemy laws.) However you have a right to not be unknowingly filmed while having sex and have that video published. In the comic example you might be offending someone's sensibilities but that isn't enough to violate their rights like the sex tape example.

Or let's use a different example like the Stanford rape case. No one is reporting the name of the victim of that case, but her name is a "raw fact" of the case. Would you support releasing her name and if not, how is that different that releasing the sex tape?

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

#514

Post by thaumasiotes »

slg wrote: post #513
thaumasiotes wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, my question is ambiguous between "showing the Mohammed cartoons would be in bad taste" and "showing the Mohammed cartoons can't be allowed because it would be in bad taste". So let me make some points myself: 1. Publishing the cartoons themselves makes a variety of statements that can't be made by reporting on their existence without showing them. 2. Those statements have great value, independent of any questions…

You are viewing this wrong because it isn't about tastelessness. It is about infringing on the rights of others. Publishing the Mohammed comic isn't infringing on anyone's rights (at least in the US with our strong freedom of speech and lack of federal blasphemy laws.) However you have a right to not be unknowingly filmed while having sex and have that video published. In the comic example you might be offending some…

> Would you support releasing her name and if not, how is that different that releasing the sex tape?

Against someone saying there should be legal liability for releasing it, definitely.

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

#515

Post by CamperBob2 »

coldtea wrote: post #420
methehack wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If justice is blind, why should funding matter? In other words, to limit the means of funding would be to admit that your bank balance affects the outcome when the whole point of the judicial system is to achieve fairness.

> If justice is blind, why should funding matter? That's a big if, that is verifiably false.

In that case, third-party funding seems like the last aspect of the problem that needs to be fixed.

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

#516

Post by gozur88 »

rayiner wrote: post #462
jacquesm wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Spending a lot more money than that isn't going to get you a much better result. And that's precisely the point, if you don't have that money (and this can be quite a lot) then you're out of luck. The linked case is about a celebrity worth quite a bit of money and still it wasn't enough to get the case decided in his favor, it needed yet another - bigger - millionaire / billionaire to step in to sway the case. I do…

> And that's precisely the point, if you don't have that money (and this can be quite a lot) then you're out of luck. I'm just cautioning extrapolating from that, to the conclusion that the party with more money wins the lawsuit. That's only true up to a certain baseline. > And that's just civil proceedings, in criminal proceedings the odds are stacked even worse against a defendant without funds. Maybe. The DOJ's co…

Considering the number of federal cases that plead out (I've read 98%), the DOJ's conviction rate of 90% seems very high. The incentives are heavily in favor of taking a plea unless you're pretty sure you will be found not guilty.

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

#517

Post by Clanan »

slavik81 wrote: post #490
Clanan wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like many things in politics and law, forming one's opinion must include considering a reverse situation - what if a wealthy individual funded the successful litigation of a "positive" entity? e.g. Bill Gates funding the destruction of the EFF (assuming someone had a case). I was taught to do this in political classes (based on James Madison's discussion of factions), and it can have such a huge impact on motives and…

The idea of your technique is good, but I think you've left out important details and it has affected your analysis. Gawker was bankrupted not by the actual costs of defending themselves, but by the cost of a judgement against them. If your assumptions are that Bollea's was a legitimate victim of Gawker's actions, and that we would need to protect the EFF from a similar outcome, it seems to be that what you're saying…

You're right, my comments definitely skimmed the topic. I was more addressing the parent's comment that we should look at the over-arching issue here, and not just this specific case.

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

#518

Post by manigandham »

tptacek wrote: post #319
slg wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't talk about issue 3 without mentioning things like the EFF, ACLU, NAACP, or any number of legitimate third parties that have made it part of their mission to support cases they think are important. How do you deal with those separately or how would you prevent Thiel from simply creating a similar organization and using it for his own personal agenda?

Most of the cases ACLU is involved in are against the government, not private entities.

but most != all which clears the way for this

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

#519

Post by cmart »

j2kun wrote: post #454
RickHull wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except Thiel arguably has "connection with the merits of the dispute". He feels that Gawker violated his privacy as well as Hogan's, and he wants Gawker to be punished and/or discouraged from further similar behavior. Just like the EFF or ACLU.

Just curious: aside from historical precedent, what objective "connection with the merits of the dispute" makes the ACLU more appropriate than Thiel to fund a privacy suit? Is it just that the ACLU has trained lawyers who can weigh in on the law? Would the attitude toward Thiel change if Thiel happened to have a law degree? Would it change for the ACLU if they were purely funding it and not actually providing lawyers…

> Would the attitude toward Thiel change if Thiel happened to have a law degree?

He does have a law degree.

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

#520

Post by gozur88 »

grellas wrote: post #278

A few thoughts: 1. The pressure point here was a court ruling declining to stay enforcement of the $140M judgment pending appeal. This left Gawker having to post a $50M bond in order to avoid enforcement proceedings by which its assets could have been seized and its business literally dismantled. Gawker may or may not ultimately prove to have a successful basis upon which to get this judgment reversed but, without a…

I don't see why it matters who funds the lawsuit. While some people are worried about a world where rich people can carry out vendettas, I'm more worried about a situation where wealthy companies and individuals can screw anyone they want as long as they can outlast the victim in court.

I want the Nick Dentons of the world to lie awake at night worrying the people they've ruined might get access to enough money to mount a successful lawsuit.

Having said that, I'll also say the courts should be more willing to award fees to defendants when lawsuits are groundless or mostly so. But that needs to be a determination based on the circumstances of the case and not who funds it.

Post reply on HN