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Comment by shklnrj | Hacker News Reader

I am actually in favour of Peter Thiel. What Gawker did was illegal and hence it is facing this backlash by the LAW.

Many people committed suicides because of the way Gawker brought their private life in public. http://www.vox.com/2015/7/17/8992155/gawker-outing-gay-peopl...

As far as he being the investor in Facebook which uses your data to advertise to you - You actually agree to Facebook's terms when you sign up for it! In case of Gawker, it was someone who was feeding on destroying the private life of people in order to sell ads.

* Whether this sets a precedent or not - That is another question and can be resolved in future. That does not mean we should support a publication which is just gossiping about the private life of a person.

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Except that the incident was found to be newsworthy and not illegal in two previous cases, once in federal court and another attempt in Florida state court [1].

Shopping for a favorable venue, and convincing one jury in a civil case does not make for a very compelling argument of "illegality."

[1] https://globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/cases/hogan-v...

haha wow i never knew about this part of the case.

kinda makes this whole thing even more of a shit storm.

Those are both decisions regarding preliminary injunctions, so your claim that they were found "not illegal" is erroneous. It's explained pretty clearly in the short paragraphs you linked to.

Fair to say, but I believe they were testing the waters again and again just to find a venue that was favorable, undermining whatever notion the original commenter was attempting to conjure about the definitive nature of legality here.

If the legality of a case like this is also supposed as a proxy for the (universal) morality of the verdict and the arguments Thiel likes to make about Gawker's journalistic sins it certainly seems like a federal suit would have been a more appropriate arena for proving the point.

Nothing illegal in testing waters. :)

Privacy-wise Palantir is even scarier than Facebook.

>What Gawker did was illegal

I didn't follow the case. What did Gawker do that was illegal?

I mean the lawsuit with Hulk Hogan. Gawker published a sex tape of Hulk Hogan.

Now Gawker has been slapped with a penalty by the court in that case. It is not Peter Thiel who is collecting the penalty using a gun. Clearly since the court has decided at this level, the courts think that Gawker's action is against law. Of course courts could be wrong and Gawker could appeal to higher courts. But since I have limited knowledge of law, I definitely think I know less than the current level of court and hence think that Gawker was breaking the law by publishing the private sex tape of Hulk Hogan in order to sell advertising.

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