You Won’t Be Able to Sue the Next Gawker | Hacker News Reader

You Won’t Be Able to Sue the Next Gawker

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20 pointsjessaustin17 comments

The second sentence contains falsehoods:

"Peter Thiel, who is a Facebook board member and Donald Trump delegate, secretly sued Gawker in a proxy lawsuit and, even though the case is unresolved, it was enough to bleed and bankrupt the company."

Peter Thiel did not "secretly sue" anybody; he is not the plaintiff. There is no such thing as a "proxy lawsuit." Paying the legal bills for a plaintiff whose lawsuit advances your agenda is not unusual; the ACLU, EFF and NRDC do this regularly.

Saying the lawsuit was "enough to bleed and bankrupt the company" even though "the case is unresolved" makes it sound like Gawker was bankrupted merely by the expense of litigation. But the verdict is in and gawker lost. The case is only "unresolved" in the sense that appeals have not been exhausted.

The term 'proxy lawsuit' is completely valid. It means he's bankrolling a lawsuit someone else is pursuing in absence of the ability to sue for what he really wants to. The EFF, ACLU, and NRDC bankroll lawsuits because they are trying to actively set precedent for other cases. Thiel backed this because he has a personal vendetta against Gawker, but he knew that his own lawsuit wouldn't succeed because it's not illegal to out a person as gay.

Similarly, when the US supplies rebels in central america against their country because they know they have no legal grounds for waging war against that country, it's a proxy war.

In a freedom of the press case like this one, I think it's completely fair to consider it unresolved until the appeals are exhausted, given that there are Constitutional issues at stake.

Secondly, when the ACLU funds litigation, they are usually pretty darned public about it. I didn't see Thiel running around advertising that he was backing Hulk Hogan for any high-minded, principled purpose.

>ACLU, EFF and NRDC do this regularly.

Exactly this. I think the liberal media, liberal bloggers, etc has lost its collective mind over this. I haven't seen so many hit pieces against an individual at once, ever. Thiel went from SV weirdo genius to a Trump-loving anti-christ in one week.

I think the media wants to be untouchable and if they want to publish videos of Hulk Hogan having sex for ad impressions they will do so. Pushback by the saner side of soceity is not tolerated by them. Its incredible anyone is remotely defending Gawker here.

I think most educated people are seeing through this bullshit. Sex tapes aren't "journalism" and entities like Gawker and their simplistic "outrage journalism" for ad impressions are not morally defensible. I also don't believe "outing" people is journalism either. Thiel deserves the same privacy as any other closeted person. How did the liberal SJW brigade become homophobes and sex tape distribution defenders so quickly? It boggles the mind.

Paying the legal bills for a plaintiff whose lawsuit advances your agenda is the definition of a proxy lawsuit. Also, the game ain't over till the fat lady sings. The case is still unresolved until all opportunities to appeal are exhausted. In my opinion, Peter is a jerk and an example of another wealthy person who likes living in and conducting business in America but won't support the values of America enshrined in our Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Why does anybody believe there are constitutional issues with the case? Freedom of expression explicitly does not cover the sort of revenge porn that Gawker habitually engaged in. There is absolutely no first amendment cover for their actions.

Thiel in essence insuring the lawsuit so that an unfavourable verdict would not harm Hogan is in no way an attack on free speech or the free press.

Something tells me that if Breitbart had decided to host Jennifer Lawrence's nude pics and gloat about how they were refusing a court order to remove them, liberals would not be engaging in this hand-wringing.

> Freedom of expression explicitly does not cover the sort of revenge porn that Gawker habitually engaged in.

Implicitly. If it was explicit, then the exception would be directly written into the text of the 1st Amendment.

"Freedom of expression" is guaranteed, but not defined, by the first amendment. It's defined by 250 years of jurisprudence and precedent. Courts have repeatedly, explicitly, said that this sort of thing is not covered by the first amendment.

I think the culture will eventually change so that both JLaw's selfies and the Hulkster's closet porn will be covered by the First Amendment, but I agree that at this time, at least the former are not so covered. I also agree that what's sauce for the gander ought to be sauce for the goose, so until that changes the latter are also not so covered.

I'm not sure what you are saying. JLaw's selfies are covered by the first amendment. They are also covered by the Constitution. That is she can release them, but some one with out rights can't. The first doesn't say you can use someone else's words.

Where does it say that freedom of expression does not cover revenge porn? It's actually the opposite. There is a very, very small number of exceptions to freedom of speech and what Gawker was doing is not one of them.

34 states plus D.C. now have laws against 'revenge porn'

http://www.cybercivilrights.org/revenge-porn-laws/

According to the article linked below, although the posting of explicit pictures of people online against their will is a legal gray area:

"[T]he legal landscape is changing and states are moving towards criminalizing revenge porn."

http://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/resources/revenge-porn-...

The article came off as a disjointed rant at Peter Thiel. Why won't I be able to sue the next Gawker? That wasn't really answered in the post.

It was answered in the post:

>Thiel just crucified the most notorious dissenter of Silicon Valley and called it ‘philanthropy.’ If this is how Silicon Valley billionaires are going to treat their dissenters, then dissenters have no choice but to go underground.

>If the price of dissent in Silicon Valley is too high, dissent will find a darker avenue. The next ValleyWag is likely to be more like WikiLeaks. It could be anonymous. It could be outside the jurisdiction of The United States. And it could use all the shiny tools of the web, Tor, bitcoin financing, Zeronet, the blockchain, to exist above the law.

The author is saying that if you legally shut down businesses through proxy lawsuits, the businesses will no longer operate on legal means to remain online and as such, the next Gawker can very well become something unstoppable.

hey HN. I wrote this. hit me up with any questions and I'll answer them here.

My question is, why did HN flag this into oblivion? Mysterious.

Frankly, it's too late for Thiel. We know who he is and his tactics. The next Gawker will be ready, if not to destroy, then at least counter.

Of course, the perfect option would be to ignore his private life, but laser-focus on his business.

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