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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

#81

Post by mikeyouse »

GVIrish wrote: post #55
mhurron wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue I have with it is that money from an external source that had nothing to do with the suit was funnelled in to use it as a weapon. Thiel had an issue with Gawker, Thiel should have taken it to Gawker.

Why have a problem with that? If Gawker was not in the wrong that would've been money wasted. It's not like Hogan/Thiel wore Gawker out by whittling them down with frivolous lawsuits until they couldn't defend themselves anymore.

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...

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

#82

Post by aab0 »

GVIrish wrote: post #55
mhurron wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue I have with it is that money from an external source that had nothing to do with the suit was funnelled in to use it as a weapon. Thiel had an issue with Gawker, Thiel should have taken it to Gawker.

Why have a problem with that? If Gawker was not in the wrong that would've been money wasted. It's not like Hogan/Thiel wore Gawker out by whittling them down with frivolous lawsuits until they couldn't defend themselves anymore.

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.

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

#83

Post by x0x0 »

nailer wrote: post #41
igorgue wrote: post #30

Thin skinned billionaires...

You wouldn't say that if some private aspect of your own life was revealed to the public without your consent.

That's how the first amendment works for public figures.

And it's not as if gawker doesn't regularly break important news -- viz the crack mayor, Chris Lee / republicans cruising for strange, etc.

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

#84

Post by smt88 »

GrumpyYoungMan wrote: post #68
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…

"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…

> Don't publish a illegally made video of people in a private moment or ignore court orders to take down the video.

What about that video of Mitt Romney at a private campaign event, where he said some horrible stuff about poor people? That was a private video, probably made illegally.

Journalism is about making private things public when it suits the public. An individual (who is directly impacted by the revelations) should not be able to use the courts to crush that journalism.

Gawker has been repugnant and they shouldn't have done what they did to Hogan, but there could still be a bad precedent here.

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

#86

Post by jshevek »

beatpanda wrote: post #58

Lovely to see Hacker News praising the wisdom of the billionaire who just managed to shut down a press outlet he didn't like. This new era of feudalism is off to a great start.

Yes, it is great to see so many people looking at the big picture, rather than just one very narrow angle.

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

#87

Post by benten10 »

beatpanda wrote: post #58

Lovely to see Hacker News praising the wisdom of the billionaire who just managed to shut down a press outlet he didn't like. This new era of feudalism is off to a great start.

I'd love to see someone suggesting suing Breitbart/Fox out of existence. I mean... they're just as 'newsful' as gawker was...

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

#88

Post by kgwgk »

mmastrac wrote: post #24
corin_ wrote: post #4

'The media company [...] had assets of $50 to $100 million and liabilities of $100 million to $500 million, filings showed.' http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/10/gawker-media-files-for-ch-11-...

Does this mean the only sensible bid is between $0 to -$450M?

Not necessarily, unless you think that the only sensible price for Facebook shares is $17 (instead of the current price of $117).

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

#89

Post by eanzenberg »

mevile wrote: post #53

I don't like Gawker, but I like the idea of a billionaire being able to bankrupt news sites that he doesn't like even less.

It wasn't direct, it was through a legal system. Are you therefore arguing that Gawker should be allowed to publish private video they obtain that was filmed without consent from the subject?

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

#90

Post by apendleton »

princeb wrote: post #31
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…

what precedent? that if you say something, you stand by the consequences, financial and all? that people take responsibility for what they say is not a new development. new journals are free to start up and take the place of gawker. nothing here stops them from doing so.

I think the precedent OP is concerned about is not about Hogan specifically. Thiel probably doesn't give a shit about Hogan's sex tape. He probably dislikes Gawker for other reasons (maybe general tone or content, or maybe something specific in a particular article by one of Gawker's subproperties; who knows?), but he took advantage of the opportunity the Hogan case provided to eliminate a media outlet.

The problem is that any media outlet, if they've been around long enough, has probably published something you could convince a jury was slanderous or libelous or defamatory or whatever. So the precedent I think OP is concerned about is: if you're a rich person and you don't like something a media outlet writes about you or your startup or your pet issue of the week or whatever, it's now been proven effective for you to troll through that publisher's history in search of something juicy to pay someone to sue over, and use it to take that entire company out of the water, forever, even if the thing you're suing over has nothing to do with the thing you found objectionable in the first place, which may be perfectly journalistically legitimate and legal.

Or, concretely: who's going to want to write anything nasty about Peter Thiel or his interests now, since he's proven a willingness to go to great lengths to find dirt to kill companies?

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