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Comment by slg | Hacker News Reader

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?

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I was going to say the same thing, but I think this is the key phrase:

| litigation where the funder has otherwise has no connection with the merits of the dispute.

I think those organizations and other social policy groups can demonstrate that they have a vested interest in the merits of the dispute. In fact that litmus test may be overbroad, allowing any corporation for whom the case is useful to their business strategy to claim they have a vested interest in the case...

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.

then he should file his own lawsuit. he has no standing to sue over the hogan case

The ACLU has no standing to sue over teaching evolution in schools. The NAACP has no standing to sue over school segregation.

In all these cases, powerful people with interest in a case decided to assist people who did have standing. Do you oppose that practice in all these cases?

The ACLU and NAACP are non-profits that are supported by a large number of members, publicly report their spending, and are governed by leaders chosen through a democratic process. When they back a lawsuit, they are very transparent about it.

What Peter Thiel did was secretly fund a lawsuit by someone else in order to exact revenge (or depending on your point of view, to provide a service to society).

I think there is a pretty big difference between the two groups.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11879525

So if Peter Thiel teamed up with Pax Dickinson and Justine Sacco, funded the non-profit "Screw You Gawker" organization which then funded Bollea's lawsuit, that would be acceptable?

Rather than just relying on what you think, you would need to propose a legal framework that can actually be enforced, for distinguishing between the two. Because it is legally ambiguous.

Because if your framework becomes "non-profit that publicly reports spending is okay," what's to stop a billionaire from donating millions to their own non-profit, governed by a bunch of their "elected" friends (membership fee = $1M)? Now you can expect a bunch of lawsuits over that question!

That would be fine. The hypothetical billionaire non-profit would have disclosure rules, and the judge could determine if their charter was sufficiently related to be able to weigh in. This isn't actually all that complicated, we do it for amicus filings all the time.

And if the judge determines the charter is unrelated, for example, you can expect a never-ending series of appeals over that judicial decision. That's just one example.

I keep coming back to a very simple policy: disclosure. When the ACLU pays for lawyers, it's not a secret and e.g. a judge, government official, etc. making decisions about the case does so with full knowledge of who's backing it.

As with campaign finance, this has two benefits: it avoids trying to enumerate all of the ways someone might try to game the system and it addresses free speech concerns by simply requiring attribution in an area where there's a strong public interest.

Oh really, so then you'd be OK with throwing out the case law for cases like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAACP_v._Button and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAACP_v._Alabama?

In neither case was the NAACP's involvement concealed so I assume you're switching to the question of whether this goes more than one level deep to include the membership lists. That's a good question – it would be interesting to see how a modern court would rule on something like setting minimum thresholds, or how many more options a state-level attacker has now to build that kind of list without permission.

Or if he doesn't do it personally, he can certainly create the Privacy Protection League in order to fight for privacy rights. And guess what the first case the new PPL might take on. I'm not sure how you distinguish that from a legitimate organization like the EFF or ACLU.

Perhaps in how they fundraise, take on volunteers, how many cases they focus on (do they dissolve after Gawker?), etc. My guess is after the fact you could prove intention with a wide variety of events, just like you can't create a non-profit to buy houses for people just so you can buy yourself a house tax free.

And one can ask why this PPL would not be a "legitimate organization" like the EFF or ACLU.

>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.

I agree with the first sentence, but not with the second. There should never be a situation in which you can use the legal process to extract revenge over a matter which has not itself been subject to the legal process. This would allow Thiel to seek revenge for almost anything.

However, Thiel has the legitimate justification of believing that Gawker's behavior in the Hogan situation was simply abhorrent, which is something that I and many other observers also believe, and also the legitimate justification of believing that Gawker abuses it's access to funds and lawyers to avoid the consequences of being sued for such behavior, both of which are reasons to fund a suit against them. Particularly for the latter reason it doesn't strike me as unfair to fund a tort by an individual against a corporation which has demonstrated every intention of avoiding justice.

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 it change for the ACLU if they were purely funding it and not actually providing lawyers?

This is an interesting one. If the answer is "yes", then donating to the ACLU should itself be criminalized.

They use their donations to pay their lawyers though, right?

It seems like drawing the line between connection or no-direct-connection isn't right here. It seems like helping fund people who have a legitimate case is good. It's hard to see a downside for helping people get justice. But it's not always as easy to draw the line on frivolous vs legitimate lawsuits which complicates things here.

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

He does have a law degree.

Ha, that's too funny. Of course he does.

The ACLU tries to promote civil liberties in general.

One of those liberties is the right to a free press - "free" specifically meaning "has the right to annoy rich and powerful people."

Thiel promotes Thiel.

It's a clear difference in scope.

IMO a culture that can't tolerate having a court jester like Gawker on the premises isn't a healthy one.

Sometimes a jester can go too far, and a kick in the ass is deserved.

But trying to nuke the jester from orbit is an act more common in totalitarian regimes than in those that value personal freedoms.

But if Thiel says he's promoting civil liberties, that his mission is protecting privacy, how can one logically conclude, "Actually, he's just being selfish" without deviating from the merits of the issue and questioning his character?

Surely ACLU lawyers (many of whom are minorities) have been wronged by the government and that contributes to their desire to help others who have had similar treatment.

If that was a legitimate legal strategy (my privacy was violated) he would have followed that. Instead he looked for any available avenue to attack them. This is one of many reasons he's not a good guy.

Agreed with the direction you were going there.

While I wholeheartedly support those organizations, your point highlights why I think making 'maintainence' a crime wouldn't pose a problem for those looking to interfere - it would just slow them down. All they'd have to do is come up with a good reason for making it their business (I'm sure even Thiel could have gotten away with a "defense of privacy" argument if he hadn't acknowledged having a vendetta with Gawker) or otherwise 'launder' their money through donations to charities or benefactors who have strong enough ties to whatever policy it is to support litigation.

We've all seen how well money works "for the people" when allowed in large sums through superPACs in campaign financing, I agree with the OC in that this is a major issue which we shouldn't let be clouded by specific opinions of Hogan or Gawker.

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

Not sure how that's relevant for this discussion.

Because most of the ACLU's activities do not fall under this discussion.

If we disallow cases because the defendant is not the government, doesn't that invite someone to disallow cases because the defendant is the government?

(Which of course happens all the time, but still...)

No, the government is held to a higher standard because they control the police and military. There are countless issues where I'd say the government should be restricted in a way that private parties are not.

Besides, the government already has sovereign immunity to lawsuits unless it chooses to allow itself to be sued. So if anything your first sentence is backward.

but most != all which clears the way for this

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