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

if he didn't have a case then he should have realized that he doesn't have a legal right to destroy gawker. bankrolling bollea's case with an ulterior motive is cowardly and unethical.

him funding a bunch of lawsuits is not illegal. there's no legality or illegality in destroying a company through funding lawsuits. afaik that isn't even addressed by the law

yeah i suppose that's true

it seems like something that should have been disclosed but i guess that's not how it works.

like if you're my neighbor and your favorite hobby is sunbathing in your backyard and that annoys me, I could fertilize a tree on my property all I want with the long term intention of blocking the afternoon sun to your backyard, and in most areas, that is perfectly legal. all I'm doing is growing a tree.

you could also pay for the trees on the property of the person on the other side of your sunbathing neighbor if that owner wanted to put up some trees but couldn't afford it

and all i'm doing over here is cultivating my colony of asian longhorned beetles, not my fault i made their home out of wood and the nearest wood after that was your tree. funny how life works out.

https://media.giphy.com/media/10FDsotj2F4Gkg/giphy.gif

I like how DJP thinks

imo I could sue nomar for negligence or for violating a number of agricultural and environmental controls but I'd probably still lose the tree :(

http://gawker.com/this-is-why-billionaire-peter-thiel-wants-to-end-gawker-1778734026

Just to be clear - are we condemning his support of the lawsuits or supporting gawkers mission of outing people?

reminder that peter thiel tried to clerk for scalia lol http://abovethelaw.com/2016/02/justice-scalia-might-have-broken-your-heart-on-valentines-day-but-he-broke-paypal-founder-peter-thiels-heart-long-ago/

its an assault on freedom of the press. the one thing a fuckin so-styled libertarian should do is believe that the government shouldn't put restraint on what the press publishes and it should be up to audiences to choose what they want to read even if it does include "peter thiel is a doofus".

unrelatedly, it seems pretty clear they didn't "out" him in any substantive sense. they just wrote about an open fact other press hadn't covered.

Hear, hear.

unrelatedly, it seems pretty clear they didn't "out" him in any substantive sense.

is it? i've only been reading up on this recently – but the way the article that was "outing" him was written seemed to imply it was not widely known.

its an assault on freedom of the press. the one thing a fuckin so-styled libertarian should do is believe that the government shouldn't put restraint on what the press publishes and it should be up to audiences to choose what they want to read even if it does include "peter thiel is a doofus".

If you accept the blanket insanity of American libertarians, there's nothing logically inconsistent here. Thiel didn't get the government to shut Gawker down, he set about destroying them on the capital side. If the damages weren't so high

As far as freaking out about third parties investing in/paying for lawsuits, would this have an effect on public interest/class-action suits (poisoning water supplies/people, that kind of thing)? The lawyers involved take them on contingency but I assume that there are also situations where someone is footing the bill along with their contingency.

no, the implication was that it was common knowledge on the Silicon Valley side of things where no one gives a shit, and completely unmentionable on the venture capital side of things where homophobia is common

the way he has been able to play both sides of the fence is that a well-off, white, straight-presenting man (and the suit doesn't hurt) is never questioned on that side

he's demonizes "multiculturalism" and started a conservative paper in direct response to Stanford stopping hate speech -- one article literally spells it out saying that someone was in the common area outside of a dorm yelling about "faggots"

he wants people to be able to enforce whatever monoculture they want while not adhering to the rules they espouse

sorry, that was an XP

it's not like I'm pulling this from thin air -- every article where he's interviewed, and particularly the one where someone visits his "dinner club" has this air of faux-intellectualism where any idea that doesn't adhere to his world view is an instant "shut the conversation down"

How is throwing millions in a waged war against a media company, self declared by Thiel that his aim is to put Gawker out of business, not an assault on free press?

xxp

"people (in power) should be able to do and say what they want," even if it's hate speech keeping a minority down, is fine in his book. even if that minority is gay people -- AND HE'S GAY

How is throwing millions in a waged war against a media company, self declared by Thiel that his aim is to put Gawker out of business, not an assault on free press?

If funding a lawsuit is an attack on freedom of the press, so would it be to organize a boycott of a media entity for outing people... oh, hey, Gawker again.

Thiel is stating again and again that it is his intention to ruin Gawker. That is an assault on press if there ever was one. Maybe too clear and in the open for some to recognize it as such.

milo is correct

I think he is trying drown them in legal fees because the ruling is probably eventually going to be overturned in an appelate court due to the wide protections of the press covered under the first amendment. I think this qualified as an abuse of the system on Thiel's part and an example of billionnaires paying to shutter press outlets.

Like, I don't support publishing sex tapes or whatever but I do support Valleywag's critical coverage of Silicon Valley. The latter is what he is mad about. (Outing him was fine bc unlike with Geithner it was in the public interest. (Thiel opposed multiculturalism and supported conservative causes.)

reminder that peter thiel tried to clerk for scalia lol http://abovethelaw.com/2016/02/justice-scalia-might-have-broken-your-heart-on-valentines-day-but-he-broke-paypal-founder-peter-thiels-heart-long-ago/

― 龜, Thursday, May 26, 2016 3:50 PM (

how moronic and evil must a person be for Nino to reject you

Thiel is stating again and again that it is his intention to ruin Gawker.

unless Thiel is secretly the King of the United States, he can legally spend as much money as he wants to try to ruin Gawker as long as said money isn't in the form of lobbying legislators to pass laws targeting the beats Gawker covers

I'm not disputing he has the legal right to pour money into legal cases against Gawker. But Thiel declared he wants Gawker to be put out of business. He wants Gawker gone. If that is not an attack on the press, or this one medium at the very least, then I don't know what is.

it's an attack on a press outlet by a private citizen. it has nothing to do with freedom of the press.

Yeah, ok...

https://postmediacanadadotcom.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/film_five_most.jpg

no one is saying this isn't an attack on the press; what we are saying is that the form of attack on the press that is explicitly protected by US law is attack on the press by the government, not private citizens

this does not imply that it's completely open season on the press if you are not a government agent; it implies that Thiel found an angle and is working it until he either succeeds or someone challenges him and pursuing this strategy becomes untenable

exactly

most liverpool fans boycott The Sun newspaper and would want it put out of business but that's not an attack on the press either.

xp

It's the use of the law, i.e. the state, though?

that first sentence is worded horribly, what I mean is that the press is explicitly protected from attack by government actors

ie, Gawker can be sued by Hulk Hogan for talking shit about him but it cannot be sued by the state of New York for talking shit about the governor

The crazy amount of punitive damages (decided by a jury) are the possible destruction of Gawker Media - not the court itself or the state. If Denton were richer, even the $140mn wouldn't kill off Gawker.

Thanks Dan, I get that. (fwiw Milo literally said this is not an attack on free press). Think most of us can agree that even if this is within the confines of the law, it is morally abhorrent to even want to try and put a medium out of business. Having the millions to support legal cases against Gawker is, at the very least, nagl.

It's the use of the law, i.e. the state, though?

By this argument, the press should be able to write anything they want to about anyone, regardless of whether it is true and/or newsworthy, and not face any legal action. They should also be able to repurpose any information they want without citation, attribute any position they want to anyone outside of the context of recognized satire, and basically write whatever the hell they want regardless of accuracy and not face any repercussions; this is clearly not true.

Think most of us can agree that even if this is within the confines of the law, it is morally abhorrent to even want to try and put a medium out of business.

Everything I have read about Thiel makes me believe that his lifeblood is made up entirely of moral abhorrence.

it is morally abhorrent to even want to try and put a medium out of business

actually no I don't agree with this

xp - Um, Le Beteau Ivre what I said was

"Because the concept of "freedom of the press" is that our press (and religion and speech, etc.) is free from interference by the state.
If funding a lawsuit is an attack on freedom of the press, so would it be to organize a boycott of a media entity for outing people... oh, hey, Gawker again."

Which has now been repeated to you by several people like eight times.

Literally no one has disagreed that Thiel wants to hurt (if not destroy) Gawker Media - what you don't seem to get is that that has absolutely nothing to do with our legal concept of "freedom of the press."

xp - I don't agree with it, either.

In this case things are complicated by a wannabe comic book villain libertarian billionaire playing a prominent role - his existence/the existence of billionaires is the fundamental moral crime, not the specific thing he's doing here.

Weve gotten as far as "what thiel is doing is legal but nagl" which is as just and ironic a way for gawker to fall as any rly

his existence/the existence of billionaires is the fundamental moral crime

now this I do totally agree with

except... if rich people can use the government (in the form of lawsuits, which involve well, the "law" which is this thing that involves government u see) as a cudgel against the press, then that does hurt a free press in the sense of an independent press that is not beholden to not pissing off rich people lest they be crushed.

the thing is libertarians historically think that lawsuits and what they consider overlarge settlements in them are one of the _worst_ injustices of modern society and represent the crushing of enterprise. so nobody is saying this is un_constitutional_ but it is massively and deeply hypocritical.

No I get that, Milo, but the legal concept of freedom of the press has not been disputed. Not by me anyway.

Deems p much otm

there are things that are legal but substantially worse than "nagl".

like, say a private individual doesn't like a newspaper's coverage of them, and so they buy the newspaper.

this is also legal.

it also hurts the free press.

and it is also substantially worse than "nagl".

it's nice to know who is actually suing you when you're getting sued, is what i'm saying

By this argument, the press should be able to write anything they want to about anyone, regardless of whether it is true and/or newsworthy, and not face any legal action. They should also be able to repurpose any information they want without citation, attribute any position they want to anyone outside of the context of recognized satire, and basically write whatever the hell they want regardless of accuracy and not face any repercussions; this is clearly not true.

Only if you think speech is absolutely protected, which I don't. It's nonsense for someone who believes in absolute freedom of speech to use the apparatus of the state (the law, including the jury) to shut down a paper. It's fine for most of us who aren't libertarians, though.