Comment by Analemma_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Analemma_ | Hacker News Reader

(Reposting here since I'm not sure which submission on new is going to "win")

Sure does make this line in Thiel's Wikipedia page a bit awkward: "The Thiel Foundation is also a supporter of the Committee to Protect Journalists, which promotes the right of journalists to report the news freely without fear of reprisal" Oh, but I'm sure this wasn't reprisal against Gawker (and specifically Valleywag, which was always extremely critical of libertarian VC techbros in general and Thiel in particular), he was just so moved by the plight of a pro wrestler suffering immensely from a leaked sex tape.

Look, I'll get out in front of people accusing me of bias and just say it: I've always hated Thiel. I hate his politics, the behavior of several of the companies he founded, and his smarmy "drop out of college!" advice. But even if you don't share my bile, you should be deeply disturbed by the fact that at least one Silicon Valley billionaire is talking about freedom and innovation with one side of his mouth, while using his money to try and destroy insufficiently sycophantic press outlets. We're moving ever-closer to a world where our industry leaders are not very distinguishable from 19th century robber barons (maybe not to you, but increasingly to the general public)

Please do not equate publishing the sex tape of an unwitting victim with freedom of the press... or Gawker bloggers with journalists, for that matter.

I don't agree or disagree with your statements about Thiel as I don't know enough about him to form an opinion, but Gawker seems to very clearly be in the wrong here. If Thiel in any way helped justice to be served here, for whatever motive, good on him.

> but Gawker seems to very clearly be in the wrong here

That's not really relevant to my point. Even if Gawker was completely wrong to do what they did, why did Thiel pick that case to donate to? Plenty of people file lawsuits just as valid as Hulk Hogan's every day. Or why didn't he file an amicus curiae? This is clearly an attempt to destroy press he has a grudge against, which is alarming even if the specific lawsuit he picked was a valid one and the defendants were "Gawker bloggers". Look at the bigger picture.

I am looking at the bigger picture, and what I see is that those who wield extraordinary power, whether it be financial, political or otherwise, rarely use it purely in defense of the 'greater good.' However, sometimes their pragmatism serves it by coincidence and I'm willing to celebrate when that happens.

The Hulk Hogan case must have hit a ratio of how much money would Thiel have put up vs probability of success and damage to Gawker. Having a sex tape made and leaked without permission is an easy win.

And why would Thiel file an amicus curiae? He can pay for Hulk's lawyer and if the case is thrown out, Thiel does not get outed as Hulks sponsor. If he wins, he might get a portion of the money, which most likely will not happen, but most importantly he gets to crush an enemy.

It doesn't matter. You don't need logical certainty("If you violate the law, you will be punished"), just some statistical possibility("If you violate the law, there's a small chance you might be punished").

The small chance that someone somewhere might file a lawsuit against you could be enough to frighten future Gawkers, which protects even the small-time people who can't afford their own lawsuits.

And if some Gawker executive says to himself, "Let's do a risk assessment on this person to see if he's likely to get outside support to fight back." Well, there's now the risk of leaving a paper trail demonstrating intent.

You're right that this lawsuit will have the positive effect of causing people to be less likely to publish sex tapes.

But it will also have the negative effect of causing news companies to be constantly afraid of publish anything negative about a rich person, because that person might secretly fund lawsuits against them. Gawker is being sued for 2 other things besides this.

But this is nothing new, and not even an especially blatant example of it, since Hogan had an excellent case, and Thiel had personal reasons to sympathize with him (as opposed to economic or other self-serving reasons).

Remember the SCO saga? There are much, much worse examples of legal harassment via strawmen already, so this won't make the media any more afraid than they already have reason to be. Unless possibly in the area of publicizing sex videos without consent.

They apparently crossed several legal boundaries in publishing what they did and were blatantly unrepentant about it. I hardly see requiring news companies to follow the law to be something to be unhappy about.

That aside, the wealthy and powerful have always had more influence than ordinary people. Why are people surprised about that?

Especially when you consider that Hogan dropped the part of the suit that would have allowed Gawker to use their insurance to pay some of the liability claim.

Odd, when you consider it shrunk dramatically the ability for Gawker to be able to pay the claim ($144M... Gawker only had $35M in revenue) - is the goal to be recompensed for damages, or to destroy Gawker? The latter seems much more likely, and chilling. Especially if you have a billionaire secret backer.

Well apparently Thiel bankrolled several suits against Gawker, so...

Well, according to Thiel himself, he supported this case and apparently some others because he felt that these were people who had been wronged by Gawker, and had insufficient resources to mount a proper case on their own.

If this is true and you still think it's a problem then it's a problem when ACLU picks and chooses which cases to support, too.

Of course, you can impugn his motives, and say he's just interested in seeing Gawker burn out of spite. Many have also impugned ACLU's motives. But I'm inclined to believe them both, because their explanations for why they support who they do make sense to me.

From a moral standpoint, I think they were wrong to do what they did. But, from a legal standpoint, many lawyers will tell you the ruling was a pretty terrible one.

And when you look at the size of the judgement against Gawker ($140M) it's a bit of a stretch to say that justice was done.

They have ignored a direct court order telling them to take down the article. You reap what you sow.

I'm liking this argument that "gawker bloggers aren't journalists" so much that it seems to negate the contradiction of Thiel preaching press-freedom yet financing lawsuits against a press outlet.

Of course, factoring out my biases, this is troubling. But who is foolish enough to think that this sort of thing doesn't happen in tech? Most of the big names got there through backstabbing

Journalists aren't a special class. Freedom of the press either belongs to everyone, or its a tool of tyranny and elite oppression rather than freedom.

You can argue that what Gawker has done is outside the scope of press freedom, but not that there is some group of individuals to whom press freedom is unavailable.

Look, I sort of get where you're coming from but this wasn't exactly Snowden here.

You understand Gawker outed Peter Thiel as gay about 9 years ago, right?

What comes around, goes around.

it might be awkward if gawker or valleywag staffed journalists.

It's great when you define journalism as "thing I agree with." Powerful concept of press freedom there!

i never defined journalism as something i agree with. not here or anywhere else.

A celebrity sex tape distributed without permission is not news.

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