hey gawker dudes. what the fuck is wrong with you?

hello muddah, hello faddah

lol

Gawker ain't doing much tabloids weren't doing in the 40's except we can stream video now
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123584348

True but they seem to think of themselves as being different than the traditional gutter press. Lagoon was arguing that gawker's less mediated approach to the news was a correction to the mainstream press and its kowtowing to authority

i am supposed to admit it was an asshole move that crossed a line (it wasnt, and i wont, but i dont think we are going to reach an agreement on this question).

The legal questions are so much less interesting to me than the asshole questions, but Max answers it here: He doesn't believe it's an asshole move to put someone's sex video on the internet against their wishes. I can't come up with a scenario - "newsworthy" or otherwise; celebrity or member of the public; Tyga or Jennifer Lawrence - where this isn't a disgusting thing to do or be associated with. So he's right - we aren't going to reach an agreement on that question!

in Max's professional opinion tbf

YRAML are you an old ilx poster i dont recognize? not meant as a dig, j/w

Long time lurker I guess.

None of this is personal, FWIW - I think you're a great writer and despite my hysterical stance I read a lot of this shit

I can't come up with a scenario - "newsworthy" or otherwise; celebrity or member of the public; Tyga or Jennifer Lawrence - where this isn't a disgusting thing to do or be associated with.

imagine, for example, you have a politician's sex tape, in which the politician can be heard using ethnic slurs. doesn't the public have a right to know, even if a sex tape is published without that politician's consent? alternately, imagine a situation where the judiciary carves out a large free-speech exemption under the umbrella of privacy expectations. what goes next? romney's 47 percent speech? before you say it: i am aware that hulk hogan's 15-second sex tape is not either of these things. but precedent matters.

But the key is that Hulk Hogan's 15-second sex tape is neither of those things!

Unrelated sex-tape thing I just saw Tweeted where I'm not even sure after reading it what went on:

A jury has ordered 50 Cent to pay $5m (£3.2m) to a woman who claims he acquired a sex tape she made with her boyfriend, recorded himself commenting on the footage and then posted it online without permission.

Lastonia Leviston sued the Get Rich Or Die Tryin' rapper for invasion of privacy over the 13-minute video which appeared on the internet in 2009, featuring 50 Cent wearing a wig as narrator "Pimpin' Curly".

During the footage, the character makes explicit remarks about Ms Leviston and taunts rap rival Rick Ross, who has a daughter with her.

At the time the footage was put online, Ross and 50 Cent were trading attacks against each other in song lyrics, interviews and on videos.

Jurors will continue deliberating this week on possible punitive damages against the rapper, whose real name is Curtis Jackson.

William Brewer III, a lawyer for the rapper, said his legal team was "disappointed in the verdict but very appreciative of the service of the jury and the court".

50 Cent got the video from Ms Leviston's boyfriend at the time. The rapper and his lawyers said he did not post it online, but Ms Leviston's boyfriend said he would not mind if he did.

During pre-trial questioning, 50 Cent said that the Pimpin' Curly character's reference to Ms Leviston as a "porn star" was a joke.

Ms Leviston, of Pembroke Pines, Florida, said she was horrified and humiliated when the video went online.

She testified: "This was something done to me. I didn't have a choice. I would never, ever do this to myself."

Last month, Ross was charged with kidnapping and assault.

Sorry for that annoying line spacing

let's imagine hulk really was doing 9/11 in the sex tape

I'm picturing Gawker staffers as the kids in Mr. Nanny

i mean https://youtu.be/GGwe0XCo4Sw?t=56s

"imagine, for example, you have a politician's sex tape, in which the politician can be heard using ethnic slurs. doesn't the public have a right to know, even if a sex tape is published without that politician's consent?"

and if the politician is a woman?

and if it's an actress, rather than a politician?

Imagine Zapruder had initially been filming his neighbors fucking.

sheesh i only was imagining because ribs ladder said he/she couldnt. you dont have to imagine anything if you dont want to!

(and to euler, yes, and yes!)

hey, they have the legal right to!

Max, you've always seemed like a good dude and an A+ poster/writer, but some of your defenses itt feel more than a little disingenuous. There may be some exceptional situation where publishing a sex tape against the involved parties' wishes might be legitimately newsworthy in a way that isn't essentially scummy and exploitative, but I remain unconvinced.

"i welcome judgment" -- colin farrell

ive got a feeling that jordan and max will be way less invested in defending this stuff when they dont work for gawker anymore, just a hunch idk

― not a garbageman, i am garbage, man (m bison), Sunday, July 12, 2015 10:53 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

also i just want to say that i hate this! i get that people think gawker is scummy--my inbox is filled with emails from these people--but at least do me the courtesy of assuming that i actually believe the things i am saying. i may be a glib scumbag but i am not a liar. my sense is that absent any connection to gawker i might be defending it more vociferously. we will find out whenever i get fired, i suppose.

I don't think if jennifer lawrence had dropped some ethnic slurs in her leaked videos that it would have made it acceptable to publish them

i think would rather people take gawker at its word that it finds the things it publishes interesting than assume that kind of sad cynicism to the site.

this states well what my difficulty with this is -- I enjoy Gawker, actually, generally think more of it than plenty of people, and all of their/ITT, your stuff around this story seems deeply cynical, and when it resorts to "it's the objectionable speech that's most vital to protect" rhetoric, it's just genuinely sad to me. idk, long-term, who gives a shit, it's just rich people mad at each other, but it's a sad mountain on which to raise one's flag - Larry Flynt territory, y'know.

lol i mean...larry flynt is a first amendment hero?? imo?

For me, the argument here isn't over legality or even necessarily morality but actually more like whether some deeper social contract stuff is being violated in situations like this. Like, if we can't all agree to not pointedly violate one another's reasonable right to privacy, all is lost.

nb I do take you at your word on where yr at w/this, but that's probably a big part of the disconnect for me - like - I 100% believe you buy into what you're selling here, but I also would otherwise have taken you to be a guy at least somewhat interested in holding people accountable for the content of their speech instead of 1st-amendmenting it to the point of "it does not matter at all whether people are being needlessly uncool, as long as they're exercising their 1st amendment rights," which is...idk man I don't know that there's anything rad down that road imo

don't mean to be making this thread about you btw and get that yr frustration here is a real thing, not trying to antagonize, I engage you because I consider you a good thinker but don't wanna aggravate

i think theres a big distinction between "first amendment means redditors can say whatever they want" and "first amendment means the government cant be used to suppress speech that criticizes or lays bare the lives of powerful people." & because i think its in the interests of a healthy and functioning democracy to define speech and criticism as broadly as possible i think this is an important case.

jclc are YOU an old ilxor under a new name? (again j/w)

For me, the argument here isn't over legality or even necessarily morality but actually more like whether some deeper social contract stuff is being violated in situations like this. Like, if we can't all agree to not pointedly violate one another's reasonable right to privacy, all is lost.

Okay I like to pile onto Gawker as much as the next person but lol @ right to privacy, what world do you live in? Everything we are currently writing is being indexed and made searchable to everyone across the globe with access to Google, plus our data is being collated by the companies that provide us with services and is being sold to other companies and is being handed to the government so they can search it for terrorists; literally nothing we do in modern society is private unless you literally live in the woods unattached to modern technology. Your privacy concerns are a fantasy.

Basically anyone on the internet complaining about their privacy should be laughed at by everyone around them 24/7.

destroy your sex tapes, people

jclc are YOU an old ilxor under a new name?

yes, perhaps you're familiar with my song "Emu"

love your work

I'm under no illusion that privacy exists on the internet or in any number of other venues. I'm speaking specifically, in this case, about a private sex tape being obtained and disseminated by the media.

I guess I don't think that ppl who aren't thrilled that their sex tapes etc. are leaked should be laughed at 24/7

My argument is less "we should laugh at people who have their sex tapes leaked" and more "there is no such thing as a right to privacy in this country". Privacy would be awesome if it existed, but it doesn't. For some of us, it never has.

talking about impressions of my sex on my private scrolls of parchment

^very very early dylan lyrics

don't you know
they're talking about impressions of my sex on my private scrolls of parchment
sounds like a whisper

Maybe there will be a great leveling moment where this kind of behavior is completely normalized and we can all watch livestreams of one another having sex and taking a shit via the CCTV cameras installed throughout our "private" dwellings, but until that day I'm just gonna keep being appalled by breaches of privacy along those lines.

where do you hide your sex tapes?

i think theres a big distinction between "first amendment means redditors can say whatever they want" and "first amendment means the government cant be used to suppress speech that criticizes or lays bare the lives of powerful people."

right, and what I think is "that genuinely important distinction is very unfortunately blurred when the speech in question is video of Hulk Hogan having sex with Bubba the Love Sponge's wife, and the critique contained is 'lol, it's Hulk Hogan having sex'"

you could infer from the number of thefts that there was no right to property but it doesn't seem like a goer to me

tempted to start a poll of potential outcomes for this thread:

*a gawker contributor says they're ashamed of their employer for posting a sex tape, the other side dances around in a tree with ewoks
*someone who thought posting sex tapes was scummy to realize that it's not scummy, the other side gets a ticker tape parade in their honor
*a new gawker post leads to a new debate between people who think it's bad and whichever once and future gawker contributors think it's ok

I only learned of this tape/lawsuit through this thread

I will grant for the sake of argument that publishing, against her wishes, a video of a woman having sex, is legal in the usa

what I don't get is, why is that something you'd think is cool to do?

& resorting to the "ticking time bomb" type argument ("what if we could prevent WW3 by putting on the internet a video of so and so fucking") seems like a very uncool argument

it's an uncool argument Euler but its a hot year for 80s sequels and Matthew Broderick needs a hit and bad

what if we could prevent WWE wrestlemania

Deadspin ‏@Deadspin 1m1 minute ago
Adam Schefter explains why he published Jason Pierre-Paul's medical records: http://deadsp.in/ZXk6JiC

if that's not a rickroll then I don't know anymore