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Comment by Melk | Hacker News Reader

I disagree.

>As that uber-blogger Dave Winer observed: “Gawker is gone because Peter Thiel financed its murder-by-lawyer. It’s legal to do this in the US, but until now as far as I know, no one has crossed this line. Now that the line has been crossed, it’s fair to assume it will become standard practice for billionaires like Thiel to finance lawsuits until the publication loses and has to sell itself to pay the judgment.”

>I wasn’t ever a great admirer of Gawker, but Dave Winer is right: Thiel’s strategy demonstrates how tech money not only talks, but can now also suppress freedom of expression, even in the land of the first amendment.

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He financed their murder by lawyer but it's a vulnerability that only affects the weak and diseased. Expecting not to be punished for egregious illegal actions simply because your victims don't have enough money to make use of the court system is even more cynical and worrying than the alternative.

As someone in a country without a first amendment equivalent, I think it's great. It's fabulous. It also doesn't give you free reign to say whatever you want to about anyone in public and that's entirely reasonable.

As for a party with more money tying up someone else in multiple expensive lawsuits. It's certainly not a practice limited to tech billionaires alone.

> expecting not to be punished.

I suspect Denton expected to have negative ramifications. I do not believe he expected to be held personally liable for the actions of a corporation he was part of and that both the personal and corporate liabilities would have unprecedented magnitude. Further, the article says that benefactor style lawsuits are fairly novel and thus it is unreasonable to expect someone with a vendetta for publishing a true statement about them would relentlessly pursue and finance litigation until the company was destroyed.

> it only effects[sic] the weak and diseased

I would hope, but would not expect that to be the case. The government and large scale corporations can certainly make headway sueing companies like wikileaks for publishing damaging media they do not control. This is quite a dangerous precedent and how bad things can potentially get is up to the creativity of very powerful companies & lawyers.

> someone with a vendetta for publishing a true statement about them

So if I publish all your personal details online: address, contacts, workplace, political leanings etc, it'd ok?

The only problem here is that non-billionaires aren't able to easily do this.

> This is quite a dangerous precedent

So is the behavior of Gawker going unchecked.

> He financed their murder by lawyer but it's a vulnerability that only affects the weak and diseased

This is in no way true! Everyone is vulnerable because win or lose, a lawsuit costs both sides money. Repeated enough times, the side with more money wins.

If I had the motivation and the resources, do you think I would fail to fund a suit by someone who has a valid grievance against you for something you did in the past 5 years? Are you certain you are not "weak and diseased"?

Therefore, the final sentence of my comment. Of course the system is prone to abuse by larger entities in certain cases but that's highly dependent on each jurisdiction and their particular anti-slapp laws which should ideally protect you from that sort of strategic suit. It's a separate issue than one single case bankrupting you because of a phenomenally bad and actionable editing decision.

How about murder by judge/trial? Thiel didn't buy a private court and force a judgement.

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