Gawker Files for Bankruptcy, Will Be Put Up for Auction | Hacker News Reader

Gawker Files for Bankruptcy, Will Be Put Up for Auction

wsj.com

518 pointsapsec112541 comments

A few thoughts:

1. The pressure point here was a court ruling declining to stay enforcement of the $140M judgment pending appeal. This left Gawker having to post a $50M bond in order to avoid enforcement proceedings by which its assets could have been seized and its business literally dismantled. Gawker may or may not ultimately prove to have a successful basis upon which to get this judgment reversed but, without a stay of enforcement, it had no way of staying alive until it could have the matter decided by the appellate courts. No stay, no hope.

2. The bankruptcy filing, then, forces Gawker to give up its business but gives a vehicle by which the parties in interest behind the company can get $100+M by which to continue the fight through appeal in hopes of getting the judgment reversed and presumably leaving them with some significant value to salvage from what is now a desperate situation.

3. Concerning the social policy question here, it has repeatedly been framed as whether it is proper for a super-wealthy individual to fund another party's litigation to get payback or for some other suspect reason and what implications this has on the news media. This is a proper question but it is framed too narrowly. The broader question is whether the law should permit any third-party funding of litigation where the funder has otherwise has no connection with the merits of the dispute. Historically, the answer to that question was an emphatic no. Indeed, that sort of activity was defined as a crime - specifically, the crime of "maintenance." The statutes defining this crime originated in England and dated back the 1200's and so could truly be called ancient of origin. Basically, the idea back then was that feudal lords should not be permitted to use their wealth to interfere with legal process and thereby to potentially corrupt. By the 1700's, William Blackstone summed up the nature of the offense (as part of his famous work summing up all of the English common law) by defining maintenance as "officious intermeddling in a suit that no way belongs to one" and called it an "offense against public justice, as it keeps alive strife and contention and perverts the remedial process of the law into an engine of oppression." In contrast to this long-established hostility toward the interfering use of wealth to influence the judicial process, modern attitudes (dating back at least 50 years) came to see more litigation as being good for society as it could be used as a tool to help correct inequities in society - hence the litigation explosion. Owing to this changed attitude, many erstwhile barriers to open-ended litigation came tumbling down and along with them came the near-universal repeal of the crime of maintenance (and the related offenses of "champerty" and "barratry"). With this repeal, it became open season for any wealthy person wanting to fund anybody else's litigation for whatever purpose suited him. If people have a problem with that, that is the issue that should be addressed and not a narrow issue involving added protections for the press only. Litigation abuse is litigation abuse; if it is bad for the press, it is bad as well for other victims in society.

4. To illustrate how this sort of intermeddling tainted the processes in this case: lawyers routinely will add claims that will bring in insurance defense coverage to ensure that they can collect on any judgment but here the lawyers were directed to exclude a claim that would have allowed Gawker to bring in its insurer to cover costs of defense and potentially any judgment; parties also routinely will make serious efforts to settle any high-stakes litigation at various critical points but here it was all scorched-earth all the way to the bitter end with no prospect of the parties achieving a reasonable settlement along the way.

I don't think too many people will shed a tear over the demise of Gawker but the public policy issue here is an important one. Can the modern mindset - so enamored with the supposed benefits of expanding redress through litigation - ever go back to reinstating laws forbidding "maintenance"? I doubt it. But perhaps the time is right for a debate and reconsideration. I think we are otherwise left a little unsettled over what the promiscuous scattering of third-party money throughout the courts might do. Whatever it is, it likely is not good.

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?

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.

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.

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?

>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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Not sure how that's relevant for this discussion.

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

but most != all which clears the way for this

(3) is proof positive the absence or presence of funds has too much influence on the outcome of court cases. If all that stands between a judgment one way or the other is a pile of cash then effectively there is no such thing as justice and this means that more often than not the party with the smallest bank account will lose.

I'm fine with the concept of 'maintenance' but at the same time I feel that there is such a basic unfairness in the various implementations of our systems of justice that some re-balancing is often the only way in which one of the parties stands a chance of winning or losing the case on its merits.

Especially when the other party is a corporation or the government I have no bad feelings about helping to fund the lawsuit (especially a defense).

Exactly -- the problem is that our civil litigation's "truth-finding procedure" is so vulnerable to financial influence. Asking how to "keep people from spending money on lawyers" is the wrong approach; the system's process needs to be robust against such asymmetric investment. [1]

People forget that proper civil litigation is a public good (in the economic sense). Ensuring that (civil) wrongdoers pay for their actions benefits everyone by making it less likely they will be a victim of such acts, and more likely that transgressors will offer a quick settlement rather than using the courts in the first place.

[1] While it's impossible to truly shield off such influence, we can at least go for some standard like, "it should take an exponential investment to produce a linear impact on the award".

>"it should take an exponential investment to produce a linear impact on the award"

I'm not sure how we would manage that but, assuming we could, doesn't this cut both ways? As long as money is in the equation, then don't all parties still benefit by having as much money as possible?

>the problem is that our civil litigation's "truth-finding procedure" is so vulnerable to financial influence

Do you have any scientific research backing this? Or just anecdotal evidence?

(3) is more a statement that "you need a certain amount of money to successfully fund a lawsuit" than "more often than not the party with the [bigger] bank account will [win]." Two slightly different concepts.

Beyond that: the "merits" of a case is unknowable. Courts don't have the "merits" in front of them. They have the evidence and arguments developed by the parties. Consider the Gawker case: did Gawker publish the video recklessly or maliciously? The "yes" or "no" answer doesn't exist in reality. It's an abstraction. The only thing that exists in reality is, e.g., various emails and communications and meetings that can lead to one conclusion or the other.

Developing that evidence--particularly within the context of a process where everyone has a strong incentive to lie and fabricate--is what makes litigation expensive. But it takes a certain amount of money to develop the evidence. Spending a lot more money than that isn't going to get you a much better result.

> Spending a lot more money than that isn't going to get you a much better result.

And that's precisely the point, if you don't have that money (and this can be quite a lot) then you're out of luck. The linked case is about a celebrity worth quite a bit of money and still it wasn't enough to get the case decided in his favor, it needed yet another - bigger - millionaire / billionaire to step in to sway the case. I don't see what could prove this more conclusively, a 'certain amount of money' can be more than what most mortals have access to.

It it wasn't for Thiel to have an axe to grind with Gawker this would have not happened.

And that's just civil proceedings, in criminal proceedings the odds are stacked even worse against a defendant without funds.

This. The "high price of justice" is the fundamental problem, whether you are a plaintiff seeking redress or a defendant hoping to avoid a default judgment.

I don't know what the fix is, but the current system is near-extortionate (an attorney made this observation to me).

If party A makes a claim against party B, but party B cannot afford counsel, then party B would likely be required to acquiesce to those claims. The standard to be considered frivolous is woefully high. And, even making that case generally requires counsel.

This gives firms and individuals with the resources to access the legal system tremendous advantages over those who do not have same.

I agree. It may be a necessary evil to counter the effect of money on litigation. As a result it should require transparency about who is funding the 'maintenance' in order to clarify any conflicts of interest.

> I think we are otherwise left a little unsettled over what the promiscuous scattering of third-party money throughout the courts might do. Whatever it is, it likely is not good.

I disagree. Division of labor and specialization is almost always economically efficient. Litigation finance is just the embodiment of that concept applied to litigation.

Traditionally, litigation has been financed either by: (1) the plaintiff; or (2) the plaintiff's lawyer (in the form of a contingency arrangement). Neither of those parties are the right ones to valuate or finance lawsuits. They don't have a sufficiently cross-sectional perspective of the industry. Lawyers are in fact notoriously bad at valuing cases.

Litigation funders can become experts at valuing good lawsuits, and financing lawsuits so that entities don't have to divert their own capital for those purposes.

Note also: in a system like ours that relies on lawsuits to protect property and other rights, forgone meritorious lawsuits are a source of economic inefficiency. Gawker is a great case in point. If a judgment against Gawker makes it go under, that means the harm caused by Gawker's existence exceeded the value created thereby. If Gawker didn't get sued simply because Hogan lacked the liquidity to bring the suit, that would've been a net loss to the economy--an entity sticking around that literally does more harm than good.

> Division of labor and specialization is [sic] almost always economically efficient. Litigation finance is just the embodiment of that concept applied to litigation.

I'd be more comfortable with your economic-efficiency argument if there were more economic certainty in the process by which damages awards are arrived at --- especially in situations such as the Gawker case. I didn't see or hear any of the damages evidence, but it seems strange that the jurors concluded that Hulk Hogan really suffered $115 million in damages. As I know you're aware, it's not uncommon for lay jurors to do a version of baseball arbitration, choosing the analysis of one side's damages expert over that of the other --- and of course the opinion of neither expert is entirely unmotivated.

Considerations of economic efficiency are a complete non sequitur. You're either being skilfully provocative, or making a category error.

Justice is not a resource to be allocated, and in this case all we're discovering the price of is a billionaire's bruised ego.

It's a completely uncontroversial view of the justice system that it exists to ensure resources are properly allocated: http://www.law.uchicago.edu/files/files/53.Posner.Values_0.p....

For example, one might view lawsuits against polluters as a matter of punishing companies that do harmful things to the environment. I'd argue that's a pretty fuzzy and irrational basis for environmental law. A more rigorous approach is to view environmental lawsuits as forcing polluters to internalize their negative externalities: http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=....

In that context, meritorious lawsuits that don't get brought are inefficient. They represent a polluter not forced to internalize its externalities, or a business creating risk not forced to bear the costs of that risk, or a business creating harm not forced to compensate the injured. That distorts incentives and leads to more than an efficient amount of harmful activities.

You're the expert, but I don't see the harm of "maintenance". If Boella was wronged legally, he should be made whole. Whether he uses his own money to make his case doesn't change the correctness of the ruling.

People use the courts to get payback all the time, in a variety of ways. It's not about what's right, its about what's allowed. People with a lot of money have a big advantage in that regard. If we try to change that, we'll have to redo a lot of the legal system.

Thiel can do whatever he wants with his money, including using it on legal cases. The key rule that Gawker broke here was "Don't make powerful enemies"

> but I don't see the harm of "maintenance"

It is right in front of your nose. Whatever your views of Gawker, Thiel destroyed a news company out of spite. That seems like maybe a little bit of a problem.

> It's not about what's right, its about what's allowed. People with a lot of money have a big advantage in that regard. If we try to change that, we'll have to redo a lot of the legal system.

Or, you know, revert to making maintenance/champerty illegal, which appeared to work for the intended purpose[1] for rather longer than the US has existed.

> The key rule that Gawker broke here was "Don't make powerful enemies"

In a thread discussing what can be done about the rich hijacking the justice system to destroy a news company out of spite, you (apparently normatively) (1) don't see the harm and then (2) essentially declare "Don't talk back to your betters". Please correctly where I'm wrong, but it sounds like you don't see any problem at all with the rich buying vengeance through the courts.

[1] Yes, money will always have an advantage. That doesn't mean throw your hands in the air and walk away.

Thiel is a billionaire, he could destroy many companies out of pure spite. If a startup founder looks at him wrong he could throw millions of dollars at one of their competitors, or pay someone to start a competitor purely for vengence. This may be petty, but it's entirely legal.

It seems like you're discussing a situation other than this case, but I can't figure out what it is. The court ruled that Gawker unlawfully invaded someone's privacy. They are clearly in the wrong no matter how you look at it. This isn't a case of rich people abusing the court system or using money to gain an unfair advantage. This is justice being done in the service of revenge, which is the usual way in which justice gets done.

I'm going to stick by the idea that people can use their money however they want within the boundaries of the law. The idea of not making powerful enemies is sound because there are countless ways that someone can use resources to make life difficult for someone else. It would be impossible to outlaw all of them, and you wouldn't want that even if it could be done.

I'd still love to hear how Thiel using his money to bring about a just outcome does harm to the integrity of the legal system.

> Thiel destroyed a news company out of spite.

Thiel enabled something which should have destroyed them but was unlikely to (because of one of the stupidest reasons to not uphold the law, "because one side doesn't have the funds") to actually destroy them.

Gawker pretty much brought it upon themselves expecting to get away with it (see their disorganized deposition where one of the plaintiffs was actually laughing at questions).

While I'm wary of letting money have any more influence over the courts, this could be seen as a way for it to actually have less influence - the situation of "A is right but can't fund their case."

The worst you could do with this situation with billions to spare would be to try and fund a side "in the wrong" to help someone get away with something, but if the case against them is that strong all the funded legal maneuvering shouldn't allow them to 'get away clean'... Though perhaps 'shouldn't' should be the operative word there.

>Thiel destroyed a news company out of spite

... Did he? Cause it seems like the court did that. Everyone's talking as if judges are some passive entity that have no option but to allow money to dictate outcomes.

I'm not saying that this type of vengeance and cash driven attack on media outlets is a good thing but...

I've seen news companies destroy hundreds of people and companies to gain readership and/or for other more political motives. Seems fair that they should have the table turned on them from time to time no?

Perhaps the remaining media companies will now be more diligent about who and what they report on.

The courts have said that in this case the company's wrongdoing is literally larger than the value of their existence ($150mm vs $100mm IIRC?), so the company should justly be destroyed.

I see a problem with a potential result where justice would not have been served simply because one party run out of funds to pay the lawyers. That is a problem with a legal system.

The problem is that Thiel's intervention is just a one-off "workaround" that fixed one case but doesn't help other similar cases.

"people with a lot of money have a big advantage in that regard" and as far as I understand, it's the exact reason why Gawker had gotten away with similar offenses multiple times already. A solution that aims to improve justice needs to ensure that a low-funded claimant can reasonably win against a multi-million company like Gawker - forbidding maintenance isn't a fix for that; it still leaves open the much, much more popular scenario where injustice is served simply because you can't afford to someone who is rich enough on their own.

This is a case that had an even playing field - before that it was a case of the rich (namely, Gawker) buying immunity through the courts.

> It is right in front of your nose. Whatever your views of Gawker, Thiel destroyed a news company out of spite. That seems like maybe a little bit of a problem.

Thiel didn't destroy Gawker, Gawker destroyed Gawker. They willfully broke the law. Even put up a self-congratulatory article about how they'd been told to take it down and weren't going to.

> news company

Woah, let's not get carried away here :)

>It is right in front of your nose. Whatever your views of $x, Thiel destroyed a $y out of spite. That seems like maybe a little bit of a problem.

What's wrong with Thiel destroying things out of spite? Should he not be allowed to retaliate if someone attacks him? Why? Should anyone be allowed to retaliate when attacked?

Is the only problem here that Thiel used the courts to accomplish this, rather than other means?

> What's wrong with Thiel destroying things out of spite?

We appear to have isolated our point of disagreement. I'm afraid I can only say, if you can't answer this for yourself, I can't answer it for you.

"Cet animal est très méchant..."

The key rule that Gawker broke here was "Don't make powerful enemies"

Gawker's reputation and missteps aside, this is not a rule any respectable journalism organization would agree with.

That was inartfully worded. Respectable journalism organizations don't invade people's privacy in a way that would lose a lawsuit. Woodward and Bernstein were on Nixon's enemies list, but they weren't convicted of a crime or found liable for damages in any court.

If you're going to cross that line, you'd better do so carefully. At the very least don't antagonize someone who can rightfully sue you into oblivion.

> You're the expert, but I don't see the harm of "maintenance". > The key rule that Gawker broke here was "Don't make powerful enemies"

This seems like a terrible basis for a justice system. Do you not see the harm this could lead to?

My question with regards to (3), is that wouldn't re-enacting maintenance laws effectively destroy the operation of groups like the EFF and ACLU? Groups like these work though funding small cases, usually hoping to set precedent to make future cases much easier to bear. I think it's the kind of thing where there's definitely positive and negative uses of the same mechanism. As the saying goes: Guns don't shoot people, people shoot people with guns.

The more I learn about history, and the more I learn about the world around us, the less I believe the popular fashionable ideas that our ancestors were so stupid and we're so smart about everything because everything's "different" and we've got so much science that we've just got science coming out our ears or something. There's an awful lot of things like that we've torn down in the past 50 years and it doesn't tend to become clear for a decade or three that that was a bad idea, so everything thinks they've gotten away with it when they haven't necessarily.

Keep your eyes out in the next 10-20 on the wisdom of easy and prolific debt because we're so much smarter than our ancestors who viewed it with suspicion, for instance. We've already been served some wake up calls but as near as I can tell we've hit the "snooze" button.

I think this is hogwash to say that funding another person's litigation is somehow wrong, or abuse when in this case the plaintiff actually won. Without it, the plaintiff might not have been able to launch a case at all, which means is that rich defendants like Gawker or even Scientology would be untouchable by regular people who couldn't afford to lawyer-up.

I'm happy about the outcome.

If justice is blind, why should funding matter? In other words, to limit the means of funding would be to admit that your bank balance affects the outcome when the whole point of the judicial system is to achieve fairness.

It's possible for the actual justice system to be fair but to still have unfair outcomes if money can influence who brings cases and who can afford to defend them, especially without some sort of loser pays or frivolous lawsuit system. Say you get hit with some lawsuits lawsuits. In each case, the justice system works perfectly — there's a full discussion of the merits in court and after careful deliberation the rulings were all in your favor. Did you still win if the legal fees were enough that you had to cut back your business?

>If justice is blind, why should funding matter?

That's a big if, that is verifiably false.

In that case, third-party funding seems like the last aspect of the problem that needs to be fixed.

Who doesn't think that your bank balance affects the outcome?

Excellent point.

I don't see why it matters who funds the lawsuit. While some people are worried about a world where rich people can carry out vendettas, I'm more worried about a situation where wealthy companies and individuals can screw anyone they want as long as they can outlast the victim in court.

I want the Nick Dentons of the world to lie awake at night worrying the people they've ruined might get access to enough money to mount a successful lawsuit.

Having said that, I'll also say the courts should be more willing to award fees to defendants when lawsuits are groundless or mostly so. But that needs to be a determination based on the circumstances of the case and not who funds it.

Weren't maintenance laws ended for a reason? In England I thought it had more to do with the differences in class, commoners could sue lords but without another lord on their side they were pretty disadvantaged. So other lords could simply lend their name or backing to a commoner and the original lord would have to fight a more substantial case, regardless of merit. The lords passed the law to protect themselves. Lords and commoners are closer now.

I'd argue that maybe we need to come up with a way to go even further. This is only interesting because the idea of actually materially harming a corporation through litigation is so foreign these days. That and for some reason a few employees of some major news papers have allowed gawker to be lumped in with their own publications, giving "maintenance" to the idea that this is a first amendment issue. Do you have anything to substantiate that it's "not good" to allow third-party money in the courts? I'm sure there are things we haven't thought of but can it be worse than big money in politics? There are still judges that run their courts, right? They still have a roll here.

As to point 3, your question is still too narrow. We should ask if even self funding of legal matters should be allowed. Even if we say this case should have happened because of funding, we are left with two major issues.

First, we are left saying that this outcome would have been fine if Hulk had the money to do scorched earth. Second, we directly admit that the outcome of this case is the result of the money spent. Both of these, especially when taken together, are a death blow to any notion of justice in regards to law. And I don't even see this as a question, but a reality that we seem unable to admit to ourselves.

Taking this question seriously, is there any legal system that has ever operated like that? What would it entail?

A state monopoly on legal services where lawyers are assigned by lot? A system of "loser pays legal costs" where lawyers bid for likely wins/profitable cases?

I think "loser pays" is a pretty good equalizer. It actually would protect companies like Gawker from frivolous lawsuits, or merely just the threat of those lawsuits. The savings could be used for legit cases such as this, without having a settlement bankrupt the company. And attorney fees are high in the first place because of the the demand frivolous lawsuits put on the system, so there's an additional source of savings from Loser Pays.

If a case depends on the quality of the legal council, rather than the facts of the case, haven't we already lost? We live in a market based economy, and better lawyers get more money, so this is the same problem. I'm not sure how to fix this though. Any ideas?

It is made all the harder by the "American Association for Justice"[0], a lobbying group made up of trial lawyers. They really don't want any sort of tort reform, which might be able to fix this problem.

[0] https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000065

That's exactly right, we have already lost.

Can you imagine the outcry if we had a system where lawyers were randomly assigned to cases, and paid according to some fixed schedule (eg seniority)?

Yet wouldn't you want a world like that? Where whenever some matter arose, it wouldn't matter whether you were rich or poor, you would get some random lawyer, as would your opponent?

As to whether better lawyers get paid more, I need evidence to believe that. I'm no expert, but it seems to me the quality of legal work has a lot to do with how much time is available to do it, which pretty much depends on budget.

Whenever I've dealt with a certain class of (suited) professional, I've never gotten the sense that one guy would come up with something that another guy wouldn't, given the time. If there was doubt on an issue (typically tax related) both accountants would say so, and suggest spending time on research. If there was something aggressive (again tax deals) evert accountant seemed to think so. Same with lawyers, I've never come across some line of reasoning that seemed like it wouldn't have been uncovered by every lawyer, given enough time. And also they tend to defer to specialty experts whenever they are at the end of their knowledge, so it all feels pretty standard.

All adversarial cases heavily depend on the quality of legal council. Law is not some deterministic mechanism where you insert the facts in one end, pull a lever, and it spits out a judgement in the other.

If you'd like an alternative, you could consider inquisitorial law - but barring a revolution, that will be a pipe dream.

> The broader question is whether the law should permit any third-party funding of litigation where the funder has otherwise has no connection with the merits of the dispute

The real question that I guess escapes most Americans (yet more Europeans notice it) is whether money should be able to influence the judgement at all.

Wealthy people shouldn't be privileged in court.

Unfortunately, I have no idea how to make this happen.

Edit: seems like Lawtonfogle and spott mentioned the same thing before me.

Like many things in politics and law, forming one's opinion must include considering a reverse situation - what if a wealthy individual funded the successful litigation of a "positive" entity? e.g. Bill Gates funding the destruction of the EFF (assuming someone had a case).

I was taught to do this in political classes (based on James Madison's discussion of factions), and it can have such a huge impact on motives and attitudes. For example, should government track all Muslims? What if in 10 years the government started tracking all Christians? Still think that tracking policy is a good idea??

The idea of your technique is good, but I think you've left out important details and it has affected your analysis. Gawker was bankrupted not by the actual costs of defending themselves, but by the cost of a judgement against them.

If your assumptions are that Bollea's was a legitimate victim of Gawker's actions, and that we would need to protect the EFF from a similar outcome, it seems to be that what you're saying is that we need to prevent victims from winning court cases because the perpetrators who harmed them might be otherwise good people.

You're right, my comments definitely skimmed the topic. I was more addressing the parent's comment that we should look at the over-arching issue here, and not just this specific case.

> For example, should government track all Muslims? What if in 10 years the government started tracking all Christians?

It certainly works as an argument but it's scary it even has to come up this way. It's basically having to explain to someone else: "You know, muslims are people too".

"It could happen to you" is a symptom of failed education of the recipient. It's scary some people today still lack basic empathy, the basic considerations that "all people are equal and deserve the same respect as you owe yourself".

Not to detract from your point, of course. It's more understandable that someone wouldn't immediately connect the dots between "Bad thing happening to bad entity" and "Bad thing could also happen to good entity". Although I'd consider it a similar failure of education as well.

I don't see how #4 is an illustration of how the process was tainted. People seem to assume Thiel and his lawyers acted on their own to make sure Gawker's insurance wouldn't cover the settlement, but why do we think Hogan would be any less amenable to giving up a few million in order to destroy Gawker? He's just as motivated to see them bankrupt as Thiel is, just less capable of funding lawsuits.

How usual is it for the court to decline to stay enforcement? What's the reasoning used to not stay? Can this decision itself be appealed?

If it's true that the appeals court would be likely to severely reduce the damage amount, if not overrule the verdict itself, is it reasonable to claim that the decision not to stay enforcement is by itself unjust, in that it effectively robs the defendant of a chance to exhaust the judicial process?

Another way of looking at this is by questioning why it is so expensive for people to obtain redress in civil matters in the first place. If Hogan had not benefited from Thiel's interest and otherwise could not afford to mount his case, then it appears that any transgressions against him would simply stand.

Where's the justice in that?

Wait. Isn't the right approach to make sure money doesn't influence litigation or legislative process, than trying to ban someone from funding another party's litigation.

If money can influence litigation, isn't that a bigger problem than a third party funding some lawsuit for whatever reason?

If we took a wider interpretation of maintenance as a crime would it imply that we should forbid lawyers from taking on cases on a contingency basis? Or does the representation automatically factor in there interest in the merits? (they certainly care, they don't get paid if they fail).

And Thiel certainly has an issue with Gawker, having been victimized in exactly the same way (revealing of otherwise personal information unrelated to the nature of their business or other public persona), so can he show connection with the merits as another victim?

Shutting Gawker was not act of oppression, the judge made a decision based on the jury's decision and his interpretation of the law, not on the amount of money Theil spent on Hogan's lawyers, and my guess is if the plaintiff were a guy that was being oppressed by an institution with more money and notoriety at hand, many people would support the third party paying for that underdog's lawyer fees.

Thank you for the historical context of point (3), it gives a lot of colour to the situation.

Other replies to your comment have pointed out that the actions of the EFF and so on are generally against the government rather than private parties. But I wonder how re-instating "maintenance" would affect issues like consortiums funding defences against patent trolls.

The question of whom EFF's legal work is against is a little bit complicated because EFF undertakes direct representation as well as writing amicus briefs (and also sometimes counsels people in situations that don't lead to a court case).

If we look at

https://www.eff.org/cases

there seem to be 296 matters mentioned (which isn't exactly all of EFF's casework for various reasons; for example, some cases may predate the existence of that page, some matters mentioned there may encompass multiple court cases, and some cases may be under seal).

It would take a while to classify all of them, and it's not a good idea to just take a sample of the first n cases in alphabetical order (for example, because criminal cases are captioned U.S. v. Somebody).

I did a random sort of the cases there and went through the first 50 of them, and I classified them as 18 government, 30 private, and 2 other (not clearly referring to an individual court case). It's also interesting to note that in two of the cases in my sample, EFF was defending (or not opposing) the government's position.

To summarize, I think EFF's legal work more often involves private parties than the government, at least by number of court cases (not necessarily by number of attorney hours or pages of briefing!). The same might not be true of ACLU's work.

>parties also routinely will make serious efforts to settle any high-stakes litigation at various critical points but here it was all scorched-earth all the way to the bitter end with no prospect of the parties achieving a reasonable settlement along the way.

Here in FL where the case went to trial we have the proposal for settlement rule and an Offer of Judgment Statute.

Obviously Gawker couldn't have forced a settlement but if they really wanted to settle it, Gawker could have potentially recouped their legal fees for the continued litigation. Alternatively, they could have simply accepted liability/default judgment and moved to the damages phase, saving themselves untold legal fees in defending the case. Of course it is easy to Monday morning quarterback these things after you have availed yourself to all potential legal defenses and still not happy with the result.

>... The broader question is whether the law should permit any third-party funding of litigation where the funder has otherwise has no connection with the merits of the dispute.

Are you seriously trying to argue that contingency fee arrangements, or lawsuits funded by groups such as EFF, ACLU, SPLC, ACLU etc etc etc are somehow litigation abuse?

The real underlying issue is that it shouldn't take millions of dollars to litigate a claim against a big corp like Gawker. Why in general should legal fees be so large that someone with any kind of injury has to give 40% of the settlement to a lawyer? This is the public policy issue that is important.

Curious if you have an opinion on Gawker's chances on appeal. Is it true that the appellate court has already ruled that the video was newsworthy and so Gawker's chances are quite strong? Would the bankruptcy go on long enough to provide Gawker time to prevail as an independent entity?

a) An attorney working on contingency and your description of maintenance are not very far apart. b) In this country, justice is correlated with wealth. That was clearly shown in the Stanford rape case. Having wealthy people or non-profit organizations fund lawsuits against corporations should be allowed.

Does anyone have any additional info on #4?

>To illustrate how this sort of intermeddling tainted the processes in this case

Do you have any evidence that the 'scorched-earth' came from Thiel and not Hogan? If not, you'd best withdraw your 'illustration'.

Libel and slander have no place in a functioning democracy. By building an entire business model around such practices, Gawker is not only spreading disinformation, it is also crowding out more reputable news sources that could have better helped inform the public.

The only criticism I can give in this entire tale, is that it shouldn't take a billionaire to sue and win judgement against slanderous publishers. Such recourse should be made available to every common man, regardless of wealth.

But still, progress is only ever made, one step at a time. Good riddance to Gawker.

> Libel and slander have no place in a functioning democracy

One man's libel/slander is another man's investigate journalism ("muckraking" in the US). In this particular case, Gawker wasn't guilty of either libel or slander because they didn't publish anything about Hogan that was false.

> it shouldn't take a billionaire to sue and win judgement against slanderous publishers

It's actually much harder to win a libel/slander suit as a public figure. See: http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/libel-defamation

Your comment exposed me to the big gap between the meanings of muckraker in US and UK English:

1. (US) One who investigates and exposes issues of corruption that often violate widely held values; e.g. one who exposes political corruption or the poor conditions in prisons.

2. (Britain) A sensationalist, scandal-mongering journalist, one who is not driven by any social principles.

The term was coined as a perjorative (by Teddy Roosevelt) and then co-opted as a term of honor by the journalists he was attacking.

I'm American and I've only heard a muckraker described as number 2.

Interesting! I'm going to change my language from "muckraking" to "investigative journalism". Thanks for pointing this out.

Does that really change the underlying belief? Whether what Gawker did was libel, an invasion of privacy, or any other crime it boils down to Gawker violating the rights of other individuals and building a business model around that practice. This wasn't some brave investigative journalist exposing corruption, this was a hack posting the sex tape of a celebrity. They aren't even in the same ballpark.

> This wasn't some brave investigative journalist exposing corruption, this was a hack posting the sex tape of a celebrity.

I agree, but the reason Gawker lost is important. It was because they violated someone's privacy.

I strongly support violating the privacy of powerful, public figures in the future if it serves public interest. I agree that Gawker was stupid, greedy, and overreaching here, but I still worry that next time, the sex tape (or whatever it is) will be equally private but much more important to the public.

I don't think that poster is talking about Hogan.

| Gawker wasn't guilty of either libel or slander because they didn't publish anything about Hogan that was false.

...not to mention, Hogan's public persona and living he has earned has been by posing as a larger than life clownish character; I don't even see that he was harmed. Ask yourself, do you think less of Hogan now? (and not because it turns out that he has less impressive sounding real name)

I'd have more sympathy for a "normal" person.

Jennifer Lawrence's persona and living are based on being extremely attractive, so was it Ok to hack her iCloud and publish her nude selfies? Strangely, Gawker crowd was very upset that no one went to jail for it.

Hogan can't eat our positive thoughts. He lost a lot of respect among the kind of people that (economically) matter a lot to him, like sponsors and employers.

Ah yes, society should recognize the positive impacts of investigative journalism. I can hardly see a between the Pentagon Papers and a sex tape!

What if a conservative politician lobbies for adultery being illegal, and then a sex tape emerges of him cheating on his wife? That's important journalism.

What if the CEO of a company intimidates an employee into having sex with him and secretly films it, and that gets released? That's also important journalism.

There are lots of other ways sex tapes could be newsworthy: a famous person makes racist comments in it (the Hogan tape!), a Hollywood director asks for sex in exchange for a role, etc. etc.

False. Statements must be untrue to be either libel (written) or slander (verbal). The sex tape in question was real.

I would not be so quick to celebrate. This case has demonstrated that one or two very powerful, wealthy individuals (Peter Thiel et al) are able to destroy a successful business and ruin the livlihoods of dozens merely because they were embarassed.

(It's worth noting that what Gawker originally wrote about Thiel was also apparently true.)

He was videotaped without his knowledge in a situation he had every reason to expect was private. If you then obtain that tape and publish it you're scum. The livelihoods of the employees were ruined by their idiot bosses who thought it would be a good idea to publish the video, not by the persons defending their privacy.

Actually the judge wouldn't let Gawker present evidence from the FBI that both Hogan and the woman knew they were being taped. This means that not only is it possible that they lied on the stand, but with the huge amount required to appeal ($50 million), it's possible that they may get away with perjury.

"Actually" this theory doesn't make any sense once you consider the fact that the racist statements that ended his career were on this tape. He went through his long public career without making racist statements despite harboring racist beliefs, so he knew what impact such statements would have. If he had known he was being taped for publicity, it would have made no sense for him to make what he would know to be public racist statements.

The judge didn't allow the evidence be heard likely because there was no evidence (conjecture). It's the standard desperation you get from someone losing a case or appealing a loss.

>Actually the judge wouldn't let Gawker present evidence from the FBI that both Hogan and the woman knew they were being taped.

Why? That seems like an important piece of evidence.

The fact that in private Hulk Hogan is a racist piece of garbage, as is VERY clear if you see a transcript of the tape, seems to me like something which is news, and something that should be reported. During his wrestling career he was marketed as the good guy, a hero, and true American. Publishing the sex tape was going too far, but publishing what was on the tape, that's legitimate journalism.

You are definitely correct that Gawker's behavior wasn't technically illegal, but it was still a shitty thing to do, so I have zero sympathy for them.

> I would not be so quick to celebrate. This case has demonstrated that one or two very powerful, wealthy individuals (Peter Thiel et al) are able to destroy a successful business and ruin the livlihoods of dozens merely because they were embarassed.

That's always been true anyway. On the bright side, this time it was all over the internet, so that's some kind of progress at least.

> (It's worth noting that what Gawker originally wrote about Thiel was also apparently true.)

In both cases the info Gawker published was really nobody's business but that of the people involved. They published it as shameful attempts to get page views and (possibly) just to be mean. So good riddance.

You don't have to have sympathy for them to want this not to have happened. I don't like Gawker. If you want to argue the world is a better place without them, I'm not going to take the other side.

But the way they've been destroyed is terrifying for anyone who wants to live in a free and informed society. The ends don't justify the means.

I agree with you, and my point was that the ultra-rich influencing the media isn't new, and is actually more visible in this case than it normally is.

> and ruin the livlihoods of dozens merely because they were embarassed.

Gawker ruined the livelihoods of its employees, not Hulk Hogan, not Thiel, with its scummy behavior.Hogan is the victim here, as much as Gawker's employees, they are victim of Gawker's policy which is profit at all cost. Well now Gawker is paying that cost.

If you are a journalist you know what Gawker is like, it obviously isn't a secret. They are not victims.

They're not bankrupt due to libel and slander. They're bankrupt for sharing stories that many people believe should be better left in private. The specific stories that got them here, regarding Hulk Hogan and before that Peter Thiel, are not libel or slander, as they both involve true information. The issue is whether publishing these things is an invasion of privacy that damages the individuals involved.

Much as you might hate Gawker, and I definitely think their practices of outing people for no reason and publishing sex tapes are morally and ethically shitty, what this really shows is that if you piss a billionaire off, they can and likely will silence you. I'm not sure that's a good thing.

Can you cite any examples of libel and slander that have been published by Gawker?

The Hogan lawsuit has nothing to do with libel or slander.

Keep the facts out of this!

Ironically, unlike Gawker's reporting, your comment actually is libelous.

> Libel and slander have no place in a functioning democracy.

You seem to not understand what freedom of speech means. As someone who actually lives in a place where people use libel and slander laws to sue people left and right and get offended, consequence being censorships and a tightening of restrictions on speech, I'd kill to have the kind of freedom Gawker did.

Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1357/

One possible solution is the constitutional right to an attorney in civil cases as well as in criminal, but I don't know how you'd protect that against abuse.

Yes, I believe our system should be amended to ensure that roughly equal resources are available to both parties. The court should require an accounting of all legal fees to be filed. In certain cases, the wealthier party to the litigation should be obliged to pay an amount of money equal to their own expenditures on legal fees into a trust run by the court, which would ensure the less-wealthy party gets equally-solid representation and would prevent a lot of the bullying-by-lawsuit that goes on. Far fewer ridiculous bluffs will come out of international firms like Skadden or MTO when their client knows that they're also going to need to forward that $1,000/hr to the party they're threatening.

Would Donald Trump have sued the journalist who published a piece estimating his true net worth if this was in place?

How about a differet system? Both parties pay into a pot based on how much money they have. Then the only legal advice can they take is set by random rather than by anyone's choice, out of roughly equal quality legal teams paid for by the money from the pot?

Just make it so money cannot buy better lawyers or legal advice, and the court system would be made far fairer to everyone.

> In certain cases, the wealthier party to the litigation should be obliged to pay an amount of money equal to their own expenditures on legal fees into a trust run by the court, which would ensure the less-wealthy party gets equally-solid representation and would prevent a lot of the bullying-by-lawsuit that goes on.

Sounds like that could be gamed by lawyers to turn into a full-employment-for-lawyers act.

Why do you need an attorney at all? Perhaps that is the question we should be asking. Rather than figuring out how to give one to everyone for free, and then protecting it against abuse.

Because laws are complicated and hard? there's a reason attorney's typically make decent money

I wonder if you could sue some of the creators of political ads. I would love to see them bankrupt.

And engadget and kotaku and most of the other tech related websites you probably read.

Also its a good lesson to other sites to police content to ensure no one says anything bad about billionaires.

Thank god for thiel protecting us from horrible things like censorship!

> Also its a good lesson to other sites to police content to ensure no one says anything bad about billionaires.

There's a brave new world of pro-billionaires media awaiting us. Just compare this lavish Vanity Fair piece (http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2013/09/photos-sean-parker-we...) on Sean Parker's wedding to the ugly reality behind it all, as published by Gawker: http://valleywag.gawker.com/the-full-damage-of-facebook-bill...

> There's a brave new world of pro-billionaires media awaiting us.

As opposed to the brave world of billion-dollar news corporations destroying millionaires.

For context, you really should have published Mr. Parker's defense: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/06/sean-p...

I vaguely remember (please, someone, correct me if I am wrong) an article by Parker explaining the whole affair - my impression was the truth(tm) was someone in the middle. Or it was just very good damage control by Parker...

Neither are particularly helpful. It's all just noise.

Ziff Davis has possible plans to buy Kotaku:

http://www.recode.net/2016/6/10/11904892/memom-here-s-what-z...

Of course, whether those sites should be saved is another question. Some have some good content, but some are exactly the kind of low quality, often legally shaky muckraking that got Gawker sued into oblivion in the first place.

If you like the kind of journalism you currently get from Engadget, Kotaku, Valleywag, et al., you'll still be able to get it even if they're shut down. It's not as though the terms of the decision include the slaughter en masse of the editorial staff and reporters, after all; they'll find jobs elsewhere and continue to get published. Life goes on.

> Also its a good lesson to other sites to police content to ensure no one says anything bad about billionaires.

Or maybe to not publish sex tapes?

they didn't say anything bad about Thiel, the reason he went after them is because they outted him as gay.

Incorrect, that's his sub-excuse. The actual reason is because of Valleywag reporting on e.g. his embarrassing failure of a hedge fund.

Gawker may have been terrible, but we should all be a bit concerned at the precedent this sets.

It's sort of like defending the free speech of terrible groups like the KKK. We do it because we treasure free speech, not because we support the KKK.

I generally have positive feelings about Thiel, but his actions here make me very uneasy. I worry that the aristocracy will now use this method to try and close down unfavorable media outlets. I believe this will have a chilling effect on the media in the US.

"Precedent this sets"? I think "Don't publish a illegally made video of people in a private moment or ignore court orders to take down the video." to be a rather positive precedent, don't you? That's the sort of chilling effect on media we should all be applauding.

Thief merely funded a court battle that had merit (in this case, quite a lot of merit) that Bollea probably could have won on his own. I fail to see what the hand-wringing about is about.

A lot of questionable things are becoming illegal to publish lately.

For example, it's illegal to film what's happening inside a slaughterhouse[1]. Some people are getting into trouble for filming cops[2].

I'm not saying Gawker shouldn't be punished, but legality doesn't imply morality and free press in theory could be helping to review and change the immoral laws. The chilling effect from Gawker bankruptcy will be that, among other things, every publisher will know not to mess with the status quo.

One can easily imagine a next generation of laws that will make it illegal to publish leaked documents, like those that Snowden or Wikileaks released.

[1] http://www.thenation.com/article/charged-crime-filming-slaug... [2] http://www.copblock.org/1281/filmingpolice/

Yes, and Gawker had purchased insurance to deal with the ramifications of their actions.

Bollea's lawyers, as funded by Thiel, then decided to specifically drop the claim that would allow the damages payout to have been made from insurance. That's fairly vindictive.

Especially given Thiel's motive that "they outed me" - come on, Thiel's sexuality was probably the worst kept secret in the Valley. When you pose shirtless on a gay cruise, I think it's fairly safe the rest of the world didn't need Valleywag to tell them of your homosexuality.

I think a lot of what Gawker has done is repugnant.

But this is analogous to me making a bad mistake (even breaking the law) and causing a lot of damage in a car accident. In the civil trials that follow, I'm sued for damages, distress, medical bills, and the like. All well and good, as I should be.

And I have insurance. As I should have.

Except you don't like me, because I previously attacked you verbally.

So you say "Actually, your Honor, we're dropping all claims that are proximate to the accident itself, and only suing for everything that happened after the fact." which ever-so-conveniently takes my insurance off the hook for its ability to pay.

And you only do this -after- being assured you'll win, so no-one can question your real motivation (apparently, there was all this damage and distress you suffered, and you want recompense. Except now you don't, because you're removing the only realistic mechanism for you to obtain any recompense).

I don't think "secret motivations" and secret financiers should be a part of an open court system (and indeed, secretly financing lawsuits used to be and in most places is still illegal because it raises more ethical and moral questions than it answers).

It wasnt illegally made, it wasnt stolen, it was in the public interest (hogan is a very public figure, and has gone on at length about being faithful, not cheating, loose morals of young people).

So... Reporting on that seems like actual information that should be public? Compare to the pamela anderson tape, which was with her husband, was literally /stolen from their home/, and was sold for profit. Judge ruled that there wasnt anythig they could do.

Meanwhile, Thiel who was using hogan as a proxy has literally just demonstrated that you cant afford to post opinion pieces about tech billionaires and their occassionally delusional comments about how people should behave.

Agreed. I don't understand the media's response. Gawker clearly violated the law. The headline they posted the Hulk Hogan video under admitted they were violating the law (or at least going against the council of their attorneys).

The only way this case is dangerous is if people start issuing bonds which are just a collection of partial settlements of still undecided lawsuits, funded by the purchase of said bond. This doesn't exist (as no banks are backing/issuing these bonds).

Its just media FUD due to them being held accountable for violating personal privacy laws.

If you are concerned the case cost to much here's a new issue for you to care about TORT REFORM.

This is what confused me so much about the outrage Gawker was trying to incite - didn't they explicitly ignore a court order so they could keep making money on a pornographic video published without the consent of those in it?

It was my impression that Nick Denton told the court to fuck itself by ignoring the court order, and then doubled down in his deposition.

> Don't publish a illegally made video of people in a private moment or ignore court orders to take down the video.

What about that video of Mitt Romney at a private campaign event, where he said some horrible stuff about poor people? That was a private video, probably made illegally.

Journalism is about making private things public when it suits the public. An individual (who is directly impacted by the revelations) should not be able to use the courts to crush that journalism.

Gawker has been repugnant and they shouldn't have done what they did to Hogan, but there could still be a bad precedent here.

Bollea couldn't win this on his own. He's a millionaire, but that's not enough when you're up against a 100 million dollar new media company. He would be forced to settle for a pittance. Thiel in contrast could afford to refuse all settlement offers and to take it all the way to a jury judgement. It's a messed up justice system, but in this case it worked out alright.

I don't sympathize, but it does reek of "jackpot justice". That's a horrible thing to do, but is it so horrible as to warrant an effective "death penalty" for any company that does it once?

And what about all the other people that were the victims of such an invasion of privacy, but didn't get a reward big enough to retire on thirty times over?

The core problem is that the "justice" system is so capricious that only a few victims get made whole, and when they do, it's bizarrely over the top.

The problem is that a sufficiently wealthy adversary can fund a case with little to no merit and the worst case outcome is having to pay the attorney's fees of the defendant. In the best case you can just bleed your opponent dry. This happened to Mother Jones.

The real precedent is obviously "don't piss of billionaires because they have many ways they can crush you".

Everything you're saying is entirely true however the normal mechanisms that would have protected Gawker were skirted here. They structured lawsuits perfectly so that insurance never kicked in.

Should the company be penalized? Most definitely. Was it worth shutting an otherwise okay running business? Questionably.

... "merely" went looking for reasons to sue Gawker and happened to find a big one.

He has funded multiple suits against Gawker.

He wasn't giving a friend some money, he was explicitly searching out cases to take down a media company. That's a precedent.

I'm a free speech absolutist, but what precedent does this set that's new? The person that leaked the "Fappening" items is also being prosecuted, why should a media publication like Gawker not be held accountable? No one really seemed to have -big- issue with this until Thiel was in the picture.

Yes, exactly.

After Thiel was revealed as the financier, some in the media saw an opportunity to re-caste the narrative in a way that they knew would appeal to our hatred of the rich and our fear for their abuse of power. The story became all about Thiel the alleged bully, the abuser of power, his petty grudge, etc etc. It was effective manipulation, just look at the comments here from those who think this 'sets a bad precedent'.

Never mind that Thiel's side was right and Gawker was wrong. Never mind that the mechanism employed to achieve justice here is basically the same mechanism that the ACLU uses.

> No one really seemed to have -big- issue with this until Thiel was in the picture

That's because, with Thiel's involvement, the case became about something else: a personal vendetta. Regardless of the outcome, many of us are dismayed that Thiel was able to weaponize the justice system using huge amounts of money.

> why should a media publication like Gawker not be held accountable?

The tape of Hogan had racist comments on it, which are arguably in the public interest (since Hogan is a business(man) and consumers should be able to know about his character). It was stupid and possibly illegal of them to include the sex part of the tape, but was it worth $100M? Did that part of the tape harm Hogan at all?

Because the fourth estate sees this as a threat to their interests.

We have limits on speech when it comes to private information. Should "free speech" allow gawker to publish a private citizen's sex tape? There is no "in the public interest" argument to apply here.

Ues there is - hogan is a public figure who is involved in politics and has repeatedly announced his conservative/be faithful/young-people-have-loose-morals bullshit.

Hence cheating on his wife was news, the public should have been informed, and unlike that fappening this wasnt stolen.

>It's sort of like defending the free speech of terrible groups like the KKK.

There is a difference between protecting a group from being silenced by the Government and holding a private company liable when they release a sex tape under the pretense of freedom of speech/freedom of the press.

>I believe this will have a chilling effect on the media in the US.

As well it should...its not exactly a slippery slope: sex tapes don't become newsworthy just because the subject is a celebrity.

> sex tapes don't become newsworthy just because the subject is a celebrity

What if the sex might have been non-consensual (see: Dominique Strauss-Kahn)? What if the sex is between a public official and his employee (see: Bill Clinton)? What if the sex is illegal (see: Eliot Spitzer)?

The fact is that sex can be of interest to the public, which means video of that sex can also be of interest to the public.

I'd be more concerned about the precedent it set if Gawker had won.

The publishing of secrets derived from an invasion of privacy is defensible by "free speech" if something of great moral/ethical imperative is gained. Publishing papers that reveal years of lying and misleading the American public about the true extent of the US government's involvement in Vietnam and surrounding countries, aka the Pentagon Papers? Defensible. Publishing a videotape without consent of someone having sex? Gawker can scream "free speech" till they're blue in the face; I think your average person is going to recognize a blatant violation of privacy occurred with little gained.

Look, I get it: free speech = awesome. But I don't think your average person sees free speech as an automatic get-out-of-jail-free card.

Why?

It went to Court and went through the due process, that process hasn't prior to this case and it wont after this case and the constitution remains the same.

If you publish, you deal with the repercussions, whether positive or negative.

The only thing I dislike is that it takes a billionaire to help a millionaire financially to give the case a fair chance while the less wealthy are powerless and without aid to even start a similar battle.

For those who don't see anything wrong with this because Gawker is Gawker, I present to you a very similar case involving Mother Jones:

http://m.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/10/billionaire-sued...

The story they reported was 100% correct, but they were still sued by the billionaire political donor that was the subject of the story. The case was eventually thrown out of court, yet it still cost Mother Jones $2.5m to defend themselves. That was enough to drive them to the brink of bankruptcy.

> Gawker may have been terrible, but we should all be a bit concerned at the precedent this sets.

That you have to have serious cash to hold a news site accountable? We are not talking about a charity, Gawker is a multi-million dollar business.

I am glad Thiel did this and I hope it has a chilling effect on the media in the US. They weren't printing news, they were going for titillation that just happened embarrass someone they didn't like. Corruption in political figures, fine, but not this crud.

How about the opposite precedent? The idea that if your adversaries don't have money, you can seemingly publish whatever you like (legality and morality be damned) knowing they can't afford to sue you/defeat your large legal team?

The only thing stopping Gawker being crushed before was the fact it had a multi million dollar corporation behind it, and was happy to flat out ignore any complaints they didn't like. Now someone with more money comes along, they get smashed to a pulp and everything somehow changes.

Well put. I think a silent majority of journalists are thinking this while their less introspective colleagues reduce the situation to David vs Goliath.

I'm with David Friedman on this.

http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/06/05/ot51-alien-vs-threadato...

Making tort claims marketable solves multiple problems:

1. The tort victim who can’t afford a lawyer. He may be able to get a law firm to take the case for a share of the award, but …

2. How does he know which law firm will do a good job, which do a bad job, which sell him out for some covert payment? If he can sell his claim, all he needs to know is which firm offers him the highest price.

I know some liberals think libertarians are gaga for markets but it seems like this would serve their egalitarian goals as well. Personally I had never considered the potential for the first point but now it seems obvious.

Are you suggesting the Hogan suit was groundless?

It wasn't, but the damage amount is excessive.

The issue I have with it is that money from an external source that had nothing to do with the suit was funnelled in to use it as a weapon.

Thiel had an issue with Gawker, Thiel should have taken it to Gawker.

I think the damage was not worth putting tens (hundreds?) of people out of a job, most of them who had nothing to do with the Hogan fiasco but are still being punished for it, putting their livelihood in jeopardy for the emotional comfort of a billionaire. The people responsible for the piece should have been personally held responsible.

Yeah, pretty much.

There is no way Hogan wasn't a public figure. viz him talking to Howard Stern about his sex life.

Gawker had, under previous First Amendment jurisprudence, the right to post that tape. Most free speech lawyers assume it will be reversed on appeal.

This is completely separate from whether they should have posted that tape.

There will be no ceiling effect because real journalists stay within the bounds of the law. Equating a self proclaimed gossip website with real reporting is disingenuous and insulting to journalists.

If the National Enquirer broke the law and was sued, do you really think it would affect decision making at the NYT or Washington Post?

I like this precedent. Even celebrities have a right to some privacy.

Gawker can say or publish whatever they want and the Feds won't come throw them behind bars, but free speech doesn't make someone immune to ALL repercussions. You are free to go tell your boss whatever you want, but it might impact you financially. You are also free to spread rumors about whoever you want but you might get dragged into civil court and fined if you unjustly harm that person.

They already have, in many cases. The Aryan Nations was shut down due to third parties funding a (legitimate) lawsuit.

https://www.splcenter.org/seeking-justice/case-docket/keenan...

Think tanks have been subpoenaed over AGW skepticism:

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-04-08/subpoenae...

Media organizations have been prevented from reporting on Hillary Clinton during a political campaign:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC

This sort of thing has been common practice for a long time.

The only real difference is that this time the media sees the victim as being part of their tribe and the attacker being part of an opposing tribe.

It's worthwhile to remember free speech is not absolute. There are several cases where it's not considered free speech, here are some examples:

Obscenity Fighting words Defamation (includes libel, slander) Child pornography Perjury Blackmail Incitement to imminent lawless action True threats Solicitations to commit crimes

I know people love to protect freedom of speech and I'm on that bandwagon, but please let's remember just because it appears freedom of speech is being violated doesn't mean it is (e.g. in cases were most people don't support something and it appears the mob rule is triumph, it should indeed be sign that something may be wrong but let's not use that sign as enough evidence that free speech is violated.) Sometimes it's not the freedom of speech that is being violated, but some person's rights.

It's precedent on both sides.

On the one hand it's "A rich billionaire with pockets deeper than a media organization, funding a lawsuit"

On the other hand it's "A media organization that posts what they want because it's too costly to sue them"

Perhaps the precedent is "Don't try to make a quick buck posting sex tapes without permission just because you don't think someone can afford to come after you"?

It's not as black and white as most free speech and freedom of the press issues.

I don't believe that this case set any new precedent.

I think they may have meant 'precedent' in some colloquially sense of the word, not the legal definition. Maybe "Successful action which encourages others to attempt the same" or something like that.

If you care about free speech as it relates to porn, then this is nothing compared to some of the other limits put on free speech. Consider the Australian guy who was convicted for having sexualized drawings of the Simpsons.

Edit: grrrrr autocorrect

You're making a common mistake here about free speech. Free speech in the First Amendment is a restriction on the government, not individuals. The reason we treasure it so much is because of the history of government's in Europe and elsewhere restricting the speech of individuals. Having experienced the perils of government censorship themselves, the Framers put this into the Constitution. Free speech has never meant "You have a right to say anything you want without consequences".

I agree. I never read Gawker or any of its sites, they were all garbage. And the Hulk Hogan sex tape was scummy garbage that I never had any interest in. But it also isn't that different from lots of other celebrity leaks that have been published before which have not resulted in damages that ruined the publishers.

Peter Thiel funding a lawsuit against a company he has a personal grudge against is a scary thing. What if the Koch Brothers decide to start funding lawsuits against Nature or Science magazines that publisher articles about global warming? Even if none of the lawsuits win, they could shut down these publications because of the legal bills involved in the court cases.

People celebrating this are in my opinion incredibly myopic.

> What if the Koch Brothers decide to start funding lawsuits against Nature or Science magazines that publisher articles about global warming? Even if none of the lawsuits win, they could shut down these publications because of the legal bills involved in the court cases.

That would be scary but nothing was stopping them from doing that before.

In the case of Gawker they lost in court because they were wrong, they didn't run out of money due to attrition.

> I agree. I never read Gawker or any of its sites, they were all garbage.

Well, no, some of the sites under the Gawker umbrella were quite excellent. That's one more thing to lay at the feet of Nick Denton; his irresponsible behavior is going to take down some pretty good journalism along with the cesspool that was Gawker proper.

>What if the Koch Brothers decide to start funding lawsuits against Nature or Science magazines that publisher articles about global warming?

If those articles were somehow actually legally libellous, that would be fine. But that seems unlikely.

Let the Koch brothers sue whoever they want. They can in this country. If they want to waste their money on frivolousness and get thrown out with contempt + paying the other side's legal fees than so be it.

Yes, I agree. This is a worrying sign of what the future holds.

But also I hated Gawker, so, difficult to feel too sorry about this particular development.

what precedent?

that if you say something, you stand by the consequences, financial and all?

that people take responsibility for what they say is not a new development.

new journals are free to start up and take the place of gawker. nothing here stops them from doing so.

I think the precedent OP is concerned about is not about Hogan specifically. Thiel probably doesn't give a shit about Hogan's sex tape. He probably dislikes Gawker for other reasons (maybe general tone or content, or maybe something specific in a particular article by one of Gawker's subproperties; who knows?), but he took advantage of the opportunity the Hogan case provided to eliminate a media outlet.

The problem is that any media outlet, if they've been around long enough, has probably published something you could convince a jury was slanderous or libelous or defamatory or whatever. So the precedent I think OP is concerned about is: if you're a rich person and you don't like something a media outlet writes about you or your startup or your pet issue of the week or whatever, it's now been proven effective for you to troll through that publisher's history in search of something juicy to pay someone to sue over, and use it to take that entire company out of the water, forever, even if the thing you're suing over has nothing to do with the thing you found objectionable in the first place, which may be perfectly journalistically legitimate and legal.

Or, concretely: who's going to want to write anything nasty about Peter Thiel or his interests now, since he's proven a willingness to go to great lengths to find dirt to kill companies?

Free speech is the opposite of that.

I only wish people were as ardently Constitutionalist when it came to other amendments (e.g., the one after free speech).

I for one am overjoyed with this news and have no concern whatsoever that it will be the death knell of legitimate journalism. Voyeuristic muck like Gawker makes society ugly.

Gawker didn't fail because of anything other than a complete lack of integrity. They were aggressive, manipulative, and unethical. I remember we had a co-working space where Gawker had some people. We couldn't say shit out loud and had to make sure our screens could not be seen by anyone else in the building. There's nothing more unnerving than actually feeling as though someone was watching/stalking you. This company and the people they employed were vultures. To call this thing a publication is an insult to people who are actually digging up stories that have an impact to society. This was worse than the National Enquirer and the world is a better place without them part of it. Good riddance.

Deleted comment

Thiel was already out of the closet: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michelangelo-signorile/gawker-...

I also think that outing a wealthy, powerful man like Thiel is beneficial to society. It hopefully increases acceptance of homosexuality.

Of all people who are hurt by being outed in a major publication, Thiel is probably near the end of the list, since he was already out among his associates and extremely wealthy.

> Thiel was already out of the closet

Tim Geithner's brother wasn't. Gawker is going down and that's a good thing. What people do in private is not Gawker's business.

> major publication

A bunch of scums and dishonest people who call themselves journalists. If I was a journalist, I would hate being put in the same bag as Gawker's employees.

Fortunately, the rule of law as it applies to harm done to an individual isn't generally ignored because of some extremely vague and dubious benefit to the greater good.

Messed up lawsuit and I actually don't know what to think.

1) Gawker was garbage dwelling story makers. I am glad they aren't going to do stories anymore.

2) Who will it be the next time something happens like this will it be a actual journalist and good content producer that gets sued to death? Scared for journalist????

Also would be nice to see LifeHacker survive this.

Well the hope is that the courts wouldn't rule against an actual journalist for doing his/her job in a lawsuit. I get the "slippery slope" argument but posting a video of Hulk Hogan having sex (taken and posted without his consent) doesn't really qualify as journalism in any way and they really deserved to lose.

The court doesn't even have to rule against the journalist for the legal costs to destroy a media organisation. By example, this exact thing happened to Mother Jones:

http://m.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/10/billionaire-sued...

But they weren't the only ones and I don't think they were even the first ones to do so. (At work no way I am researching if I am right) I HATE GAWKER but it does seem strange that no one else was sued for this.

At this point, I'm just going to enjoy it for what it is. Good prevailing over evil.

Enjoy the wins when they're around. You can never predict the future too well anyway.

I don't understand #2 (and I've heard it a lot). Theil with all his money was unable to sue/destroy them for a decade even with their despicable behaviour. It wasn't until they did something illegal (the Hogan case) that they went down. Is there really risk for journalists who don't break privacy laws?

Also would be nice to see LifeHacker survive this.

Hopefully the market niche of LifeHacker will be polyfilled quickly. Also hopefully, the market niche of most of the rest of Gawker won't.

Jalopnik is a pretty good car site too. Good community and more than just regurgitated press release car reviews.

Hopefully it finds a new home without too much blood loss.

If they had just reported on Hogan's affair without actually releasing the video, would they still have gotten sued?

This wouldn't happen to a good journalist because a good journalist wouldn't publish a stolen sex tape.

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist.

1) Why do you think that Gawker will shut down? Someone will buy it at the auction and they have all reasons to continue to publish, maybe with better legal advice. It's still a valuable media property.

It wasn't "posted video ... sued out of existence"

Gossip rags come and go. As long as there are celebrities there will be celebrity tabloids.

Privately funding a lawsuit for someone else so you can settle a grudge is ethically dubious, at best.

The American system of allowing juries instead of judges to set reward amounts only ultimately benefits overpaid lawyers, and society as a whole is worse off from the damages of frivolous lawsuits.

That's all I think there really is to say about that...

>Privately funding a lawsuit for someone else so you can settle a grudge is ethically dubious, at best.

Do you feel that revenge in general is ethically dubious or just the lawsuit part?

The justice system in any democracy should be a level playing field in the eyes of the law, not a pay-to-play free for all.

here's a summary:

Gawker Media filed for bankruptcy Friday and the company will be put up for auction after a judge ruled that a $140 million jury judgment against it in a costly legal battle with former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan would stand.

The sale auction will begin with an opening bid of $100 million from the digital media company and publisher Ziff Davis LLC, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The sale was triggered after the judge overseeing the invasion-of-privacy case brought by Hulk Hogan—whose real name is Terry Bollea—declined to issue a stay pending Gawker’s appeal.

Proceeds from a sale will go into a fund to finance further litigation costs and cover whatever damages may ultimately be leveled following the appeals process, which could take years to resolve.

Two weeks ago, it emerged that Silicon Valley billionaire and investor Peter Thiel has been financing Mr. Bollea’s legal fight and other such battles involving people who Mr. Thiel feels have been targeted unfairly by the media company.

And nothing of value was lost.

Partially joking, I think the US Press gains further distance from Tabloid muck-racking. I'm not a trained Journalist or identify as one (different type of writing). But, in my mind, there's a "newsworthiness" level of integrity that is a pre-requisite for breaking open something that was otherwise private or hidden. This was not one of those instances IMO.

A billionaire used his money and influence to destroy an organization because he doesn't agree with what they say. I can think of at least one thing of value that was lost.

> he doesn't agree with what they say

That wording seems a bit too kind to Gawker.

The real issue is that money shouldn't play as much a role in court as it does. Many other problems discussed here like billionaires buying influence are really just corollaries to that.

Money and influence would have got him nowhere if Gawker had stayed within the law and/or common decency.

It was a long time coming.

LifeHacker?

Life hack: Don't read LifeHacker.

I feel like Lifehacker might have been somewhat unique in say 2006 but that whole "productivity" space has become somewhat saturated.

I was gonna say lifehacker isn't the same anymore for me. But I guess they do have all that content from so long ago others may not have experienced... And the latest stuff isn't so bad. There was a time I just stopped visiting because it was product placement and almost zero new information week after week.

Kotaku is great. Jalopnik was pretty good.

Maybe lifehacker?

I don't like Gawker, but I like the idea of a billionaire being able to bankrupt news sites that he doesn't like even less.

Well Gawker isn't exactly the Wall Street Journal and they didn't get the bankruptcy treatment for having a differing political opinion or some different viewpoint. They were bullying people and now they are getting bullied.

False equivalency. They bullied Thiel, and made him unhappy. I don't see any evidence that his ability to do business has been affected.

Thiel has now made it impossible for Gawker to continue as a company.

The effect of the bullying is vastly different.

If Gawker hadn't acted in a manner opening themselves up for lawsuit, the billionaire wouldn't have been able to do anything. News organizations have some serious legal protections already.

It wasn't direct, it was through a legal system. Are you therefore arguing that Gawker should be allowed to publish private video they obtain that was filmed without consent from the subject?

He didn't. Gawker chose to do all the things that got them sued in the first place.

Good thing it was just Gawker then, instead of a principled news site. Yes I understand there's collateral damage under the corporate umbrella. It happens.

What do you think of the idea of the ACLU being able to bankrupt a news site that they don't like?

Sad in a way. AFAIK, Gawker is not only one of the few independent online media companies (VICE/Vox/BuzzFeed/BusinessInsider are heavily funded/owned by massive media conglomerates), it was one of the few media companies period making a healthy profit:

http://www.politico.com/media/story/2016/06/gawkers-pre-hoga...

> The company’s revenue had grown from about $5.3 million in 2006 to $43.8 million in 2014. It was consistently profitable, with a 2014 operating income of $6.7 million. Most importantly, it had an ambitious plan to create a lucrative new revenue stream by monetizing third-party content on its proprietary online publishing platform, Kinja, that promised to deliver the site from many of the increasing pressures facing ad-supported digital publishing.

I wouldn't be surprised if Gawker were the only online-only media company that was making profits in the range of millions. That Hogan video, which couldn't have brought in more than a good week's worth of traffic, was a fucking dumb way to flush a nearly billion dollar company down the toilet. For legal reasons, Gawker has publicly stood by the former editor who published the post (and then who went on to create another Gawker-like site [1], that immediately folded because of non-traffic), but I wonder if Gawker employees are privately treating him like a pariah.

[1] http://ratter.com/

I find it kind of perverse to champion a company based solely on their profitability. Gawker was a profitable media company because they were one of the the only ones debased enough to resort to muckraking for their tasteless, voyeuristic audiences.

Good riddance, I say.

Yeah, there were definitely other instances of lines being crossed, but for which Gawker would not have been sued, because the subjects didn't have Hogan's celebrity (or Thiel's backing): http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3488027/Gawker-edito...

As much great journalism Gawker has produced, we can't ignore that such work was mostly loss-leaders, and not likely what drove its revenue and popularity. The decision to post the Hogan video was just a symptom of that culture, albeit a fatal symptom.

Reminds me of how the Daily Mail is the most popular newspaper in the UK (and also has rather questionable quality stories and reporting):

http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/mail-titles-overtake-sun-becom...

But yeah, a company being profitable (especially a media one) doesn't mean it's a good thing for society.

Why are you using "muckraking" as a negative term?

IMO, Thiel did not bought the justice, it only worked out fine for him because a just judge ruled that Gawker was wrong according to the law.

And those who think he de facto bought the law; they should fight for the justice system itself to be reformed, not shaming or trying to regulate who pays the lawyers bill (although I think it could be a public information).

That's what happens when you're a news organization critical of Silicon Valley, and a tech billionaire doesn't like it. Which media outlet is next on Thiel's hit list?

It's worthwhile to remember free speech is not absolute. There are several cases where it's not considered free speech, here are some examples: Obscenity, Fighting words, Defamation (includes libel, slander) Child pornography, Perjury, Blackmail, Incitement to imminent lawless action, True threats, Solicitations to commit crimes.

As a fan of privacy rights, this pleases me.

Also, sites like Gawker benefit from encouraging the most base aspects of our culture. Seeing one head of the hydra getting chopped off isn't really progress, but it is satisfying.

The size of the award is insane. Wrongful death suits are awarded far lower amounts.

Honestly that's the part of this story that stands out to me. Clearly Gawker was in the wrong for posting the sex tape, but the size of the punishment seems massively disproportionate.

It seems fairly common for judges to end up having to reduce the amount that juries award. If you look at responses to news articles about fines against companies, many people immediately compare them against the company's revenues or net worth as a measure of how fair the amounts were. I presume that's how juries see these things as well.

Its amazing how many people are coming to claim this is "100% awesome", but in another thread will say that reddit closing threads that share stolen nudes or preteen porn is censorship that should be illegal and is demonstrating the power of SJWs.

They're just mimicking Gawker, who was condemning the Fappening but championing Hogan's sex tape :)

You decimated those make believe opponents who don't exist.

There's not a lot of evidence that these are the same people.

You know not everyone on the internet is the same??

On the other hand, I seem to recall there being no shortage of people who attacked Reddit over people posting revenge porn but sided with Gawker on this. Especially in the media. (Not just talking Gawker employees either, though there were plenty of those from all it's sub-publications.)

Nothing of value was lost. Good riddance.

Of course, they may very well just end up under a new owner, which might change things... a little... hopefully.

I'm torn between everyone having their privacy and ripping the band-aid off by exposing everyone's private life at once so we see how things really are instead of how we think them to be

For instance, I'd bet that many marriages are largely keeping up appearances while hiding some big secrets which would put the whole concept of "Western marriage" at risk (perhaps justifiably)

Hmmm....

Do you need to see how everyone's private life is, or is this just curiosity?

Sure, if you can live with the unnecessary consequences of how some people might react when their private lives are exposed - Ashley Madison Hack[0] provides a salient recent example [1].

Furthermore, it is obvious to many that some marriages are all for appearances. But they are also for children. They're also to appease nuclear and extended family. I don't understand the line of thinking where you could justify needing to know which other families are staying together "for the children" or "to keep their parents happy."

Is it any of your business?

Humans have kept their thoughts to themselves throughout their entire history (citation needed). Because the data collection practices of the Internet deceive the average person into giving their private thoughts to a SERP or telemetry-ridden OS, that gives you the right to "rip the bandaid" off everyone?

[0]: http://fusion.net/story/195787/whats-going-on-with-ashley-ma... [1]: http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/why-ashely-madison...

The thing I have trouble reconciling is that the merits of the case were judged in a court of law and found in favor for Hogan and against Gawker. AFAICT, the fact that Thiel was funding Hogan's case only became widely known after the judgment. Honest question - would there have been the same judgment against Gawker if Thiel didn't fund the case?

I also have trouble understanding how what Gawker did as ethical journalism, relativistically speaking or otherwise. It's hard to compare a sex tape of a former wrestler to uncovering scandals in a major institution, like the Washington Post did for Watergate, the NY Times did with the Pentagon Papers, the Boston Globe with the sexual predation in the Catholic church, or even what every major media outlet published with the Monica Lewinsky affair. Publishing this sex tape was for clickbait, which is purely about metrics and much less about holding our institutions and public figures accountable for unethical or illegal activity.

'The media company [...] had assets of $50 to $100 million and liabilities of $100 million to $500 million, filings showed.'

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/10/gawker-media-files-for-ch-11-...

Does this mean the only sensible bid is between $0 to -$450M?

Good riddance. They took a gamble and lost. That's business. That's life.

they took a gamble and lost, that's business != good riddance

Looks like Thiel going public crushed any hopes Gawker may have had of being able to acquire funding to fight the lawsuits.

Very well played by Thiel, whether or not you agree with what he did.

Will Darth Thiel now give Hulk Hogan the money he won't get from the court outcome?

Or is Hulk Hogan left as just a pawn in the game, with the court victory but no payout?

Cant read because of paywall, but I have been following along with this "dramady." I wonder what form of invasive media will fill the void in Gawkers wake. If anyone thinks this is the end of Gawkers distasteful form of journalism they are very wrong.

Gawker worked. It was nasty, but it worked. Companies will form and fill the gap; but they'll be more resilient because they'll remember how Gawker fell.

Search the title, click the result. If the referer is a search engine it won't paywall you.

I wonder what kind of horrible stuff they'll put up for sale that they probably didn't dare to publish themselves.

Does the auction include debt obligations?

Gawker's debt will be reduced by declaring bankruptcy. It'll take time to find out by how much it will be reduced.

I wonder if Thiel will follow the management around waiting to pounce on them doing something else, just to solidify his brand. Kinda like the IRS loves seeing reporting of people suffering from IRS & tax problems as an advertisement to not mess with the IRS.

Any lawyer here care ti tell why the following would not work?

1. Start new corporation 2. Buy new set of domain name with said corporation 3. Redirect Gawker (and other gawker sites) to new domains until they sell the carcass of the now-defunct Gawker.

I just don't get why Gawker was an American company. If you want to do something sue-worthy, just base your legal self in some uncooperative country e.g. Russia?

I hope Jalopnik survives largely intact. It's one of the better/more entertaining general car sites put there.

YAY! Score 1 for decency in the media!

Whatever the outcome, I hope Jalopnik sticks around.

Gawking at Gawker circling the sewer drain.

Some context, for those who haven't been following:

  - Peter Thiel, Tech Billionaire, Reveals Secret War with Gawker[1]
  - Hulk Hogan awarded payout over Gawker sex tapes[2]
  - $115M verdict in Hulk Hogan sex-tape lawsuit could wipe out Gawker[3]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11774588

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11315985

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11318100

In your context, you forgot the step before those:

- Gawker outs Pether Thiel

Also missing from the timeline:

- Gawker publishes a person's sex tape without their consent.

You forgot a step before that:

- Peter Thiel is a hard-core activist for individual rights, including freedom of speech

Thiel is pro-freedom when it suits him and anti-freedom when it doesn't. In my opinion, he has lobbied for a world where journalists can "out" people, and now he's taking revenge when it happens to harm him.

News flash: Peter Thiel does something productive with a lot of money. (This isn't the first time, but it's still newsworthy when it happens. In no small part, because it doesn't always work.)

Anybody want to set up a group buy for Jezebel? I want to shape what women think about to be more in line with my image of reality.

partially kidding

Thin skinned billionaires...

You wouldn't say that if some private aspect of your own life was revealed to the public without your consent.

I personally know several gay men who were outed against their will. In some cases it ruined their lives. One committed suicide. They didn't have billions to insulate them from the harm it caused them.

None of them went on revenge campaigns for being outed, not even with their meager, non-billionaire resources.

Liberals cheers for this, and get angry when Brazil blocks Whatsapp or Facebook. Logic. None.

Lovely to see Hacker News praising the wisdom of the billionaire who just managed to shut down a press outlet he didn't like. This new era of feudalism is off to a great start.

"press outlet" . That billionnaire didn't force Gawker to act like scum. Good riddance.

Yes, it is great to see so many people looking at the big picture, rather than just one very narrow angle.

I'd love to see someone suggesting suing Breitbart/Fox out of existence. I mean... they're just as 'newsful' as gawker was...

Oh dear

Don't anger the Billionaire. He can fund the Lawsuits longer than you can stay solvent.

Except that's not what happened here.

Ah, schadenfreude at its finest!

Purveyors of news take note. Provide news. Don't engage in useless insight into peoples' personal peccadilloes which have little if any bearing on people at large. Don't be lured by the clickbait revenue model or trade in inconsequential lurid tales and try to pedal it as hard news.

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