Hulk Hogan awarded payout over Gawker sex tapes • Hacker News Board

Re: Hulk Hogan awarded payout over Gawker sex tapes

#31

Post by tptacek » Sat, Mar 19, 2016, 1:06 AM UTC

rco8786 wrote: post #26

tptacek wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bollea's "porn" wasn't "stolen". It was created without his knowledge and circulated by the person who created it, which is how it leaked. That doesn't remotely describe what happened to the women whose pictures were published a few years back. It's a little disquieting to read a comment that suggests there might have been a free speech angle to the latter story. Bollea's case might (in fact, probably will) be revers…

Is it being created without his knowledge better or wore than what happened in the fappening? I'm not sure what your comment is trying to say. Both things sound pretty horrendous.

I agree that they are both horrendous!

Re: Hulk Hogan awarded payout over Gawker sex tapes

#32

Post by bbanyc » Sat, Mar 19, 2016, 1:06 AM UTC

Both sides in this case were utterly contemptible. I would have found that Gawker invaded Hogan's privacy and awarded Hogan one dollar in damages, leaving everyone unhappy but the lawyers.

Invasion of privacy, despite its questionable origins, is now generally recognized as a valid tort and outside of the protections of the First Amendment. No new precedent is being set here.

Re: Hulk Hogan awarded payout over Gawker sex tapes

#33

Post by fweespee_ch » Sat, Mar 19, 2016, 1:07 AM UTC

hartpuff wrote: post #28

fweespee_ch wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Before anyone goes on a "Gawker is a terrible site, they deserve it" tangent, keep in mind that this does set precedent for other individuals to sue other media companies for massive amounts of money, which could be another problem for an already-struggling ecosystem. (Although in fairness, this incident is particularly egregious, especially as they disobeyed a judge's order to take down the video) 1) Nonconsensual…

> Nonconsensual porn Can't you find a better term? This makes it sound like a rape video.

Suggestions?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenge_porn

> The term is also often misused to describe non 'revenge' scenarios, including nonconsensual pornography distributed by hackers or by individuals seeking profit or notoriety

I'm not the only one that uses it that way :/

Re: Hulk Hogan awarded payout over Gawker sex tapes

#34

Post by tptacek » Sat, Mar 19, 2016, 1:07 AM UTC

bbanyc wrote: post #32

Both sides in this case were utterly contemptible. I would have found that Gawker invaded Hogan's privacy and awarded Hogan one dollar in damages, leaving everyone unhappy but the lawyers. Invasion of privacy, despite its questionable origins, is now generally recognized as a valid tort and outside of the protections of the First Amendment. No new precedent is being set here.

I don't think Bollea is a particularly good person, but I'm not clear on how his conduct in this controversy was "contemptible".

For the 1A concern here, consider the Anthony Weiner case, in which indisputably private photos of Weiner were also published. I don't like that they were (I think he could have been just as effectively ejected from public life with good writing) but it's concerning to think that he'd have a tort hammer to swing to keep the story from coming out at all.

Re: Hulk Hogan awarded payout over Gawker sex tapes

#35

Post by danso » Sat, Mar 19, 2016, 1:10 AM UTC

I've long stopped reading Gawker for serious news or even entertainment...but I'm going to miss it as it is possibly the only independent online media outlet that actually made a profit. BuzzFeed might make a profit but NBC(Comcast) owns $200M of it [1]. Vox, too, got $200M from NBC [2]. Vice, as far as anyone can tell, is not near profitability (it just started its own TV channel), and has $400M from Disney [3]...and everyone else that is not a traditional news organization is not really on the radar for long-term viability.

What's sad is that this was pretty much an unforced error. They already got plenty of page views from the post that described seeing the tape. The editor who made the decision is no longer even there and failed at his own online media startup. What shouldn't be overlooked is how much Gawker invested in its own content-management system, Kinja...the estimates are as high as $20 million for what is literally a glorified, multi-site commenting system [4].

Very few online organizations could survive that kind of sunk investment...Gawker's editorial bent was such that it would post the Hogan tape just for the hell of it rather than to make pageview profit...but Gawker pretty much lost all of its great writers and reporters over the past two years, including Adrian Chen (who now seems to regularly turn huge features at the NYT and the New Yorker) and Nitasha Tiku.

I'm going to miss Deadspin especially. Sports news and entertainment was already monopolized by ESPN/Disney...we don't even have Grantland anymore.

[1] http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/18/buzzfeed-nbcuniversal/

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/13/business/media/nbcuniversa...

[3] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-08/disney-sai...

[4] http://digiday.com/publishers/gawkers-kinja-retreat-shows-fa...

Re: Hulk Hogan awarded payout over Gawker sex tapes

#36

Post by krapp » Sat, Mar 19, 2016, 1:10 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #20

I think @Popehat summed this up nicely: https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/710972390566563845 First they came for Gawker, and I did not speak out. Because fuck Gawker.

This may be one of the few times a "First They Came" reference on the internet wasn't completely inane.

Re: Hulk Hogan awarded payout over Gawker sex tapes

#37

Post by Trisell » Sat, Mar 19, 2016, 1:13 AM UTC

I agree that we live in a country With a constitution that gives us free speech, but while we have the right to say something, that doesn't relieve us of the responsibility of what we say.

Gawker had every right to post this video, they also now have the full responsibility for the consequences. This case has established that you can still post sex tapes, but you now run the very real risk of loosing a lot in doing that.

This court case doesn't say you can't, it just says that doing it could be prohibitively expensive to do it.

Re: Hulk Hogan awarded payout over Gawker sex tapes

#38

Post by belorn » Sat, Mar 19, 2016, 1:16 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #24

tomp wrote: post #17

I'm not sure how I feel about the verdict (freedom of speech vs privacy), but I'm really happy that the media sexist bias was exposed. It was really distasteful how they were criticising and condemning "The Fappening" (i.e. female stolen porn) while happily participating in the reverse (Hulk Hogan's male stolen porn).

Bollea's "porn" wasn't "stolen". It was created without his knowledge and circulated by the person who created it, which is how it leaked. That doesn't remotely describe what happened to the women whose pictures were published a few years back. It's a little disquieting to read a comment that suggests there might have been a free speech angle to the latter story. Bollea's case might (in fact, probably will) be revers…

Sweden recently created a new law to explicit punish those who distribute sexual videos and images of a person without their consent. They don't distinguish if the images was stolen, created without the victims knowledge, or even created with consent. The law makers recognize the damage that non-consenting distribution cause.

Re: Hulk Hogan awarded payout over Gawker sex tapes

#39

Post by fweespee_ch » Sat, Mar 19, 2016, 1:24 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #34

bbanyc wrote: post #32

Both sides in this case were utterly contemptible. I would have found that Gawker invaded Hogan's privacy and awarded Hogan one dollar in damages, leaving everyone unhappy but the lawyers. Invasion of privacy, despite its questionable origins, is now generally recognized as a valid tort and outside of the protections of the First Amendment. No new precedent is being set here.

I don't think Bollea is a particularly good person, but I'm not clear on how his conduct in this controversy was "contemptible". For the 1A concern here, consider the Anthony Weiner case, in which indisputably private photos of Weiner were also published. I don't like that they were (I think he could have been just as effectively ejected from public life with good writing) but it's concerning to think that he'd have…

Wasn't Anthony Weiner cover in the pictures the media published [i.e. boxers]?

The line should be drawn at pornography/actual nudity being published without people's consent. Good writing is sufficient to convey the message.

Re: Hulk Hogan awarded payout over Gawker sex tapes

#40

Post by koolba » Sat, Mar 19, 2016, 1:27 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #34

bbanyc wrote: post #32

Both sides in this case were utterly contemptible. I would have found that Gawker invaded Hogan's privacy and awarded Hogan one dollar in damages, leaving everyone unhappy but the lawyers. Invasion of privacy, despite its questionable origins, is now generally recognized as a valid tort and outside of the protections of the First Amendment. No new precedent is being set here.

I don't think Bollea is a particularly good person, but I'm not clear on how his conduct in this controversy was "contemptible". For the 1A concern here, consider the Anthony Weiner case, in which indisputably private photos of Weiner were also published. I don't like that they were (I think he could have been just as effectively ejected from public life with good writing) but it's concerning to think that he'd have…

In the Wiener case he was sending the pictures of his crotch via SMS. There's no expectation of privacy from content that you've shared willingly, no matter how perverted the content.