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Comment by throwawayjava | Hacker News Reader

Free speech. And, in particular, the chilling effect that's possible due to how our civil justice system is defined.

I assume you don't mean the free speech of Thiel to fund any lawsuit he wants to?

No, he's one of the few people whose free speech I'm not terribly concerned about. (Don't be confused: I think he should have the right to express his opinion, I just don't think that right is in any jeopardy).

I mean the free speech of anyone who doesn't have $N million needed to fend off a civil suit. If cases like this and the MJ one become common-place, there's a very real risk of chilling effect.

Incidentally, I think it's probably possible to allow Thiel the ability to sue Gawker into the ground without also having a system where genuinely legal free speech is reserved for people who can afford massive financial risk. So there's absolutely no reason for you to disagree with me just because you think Thiel in on the right side of the Gawker issue...

I think that's important as well, but both the Gawker and MJ cases are entirely irrelevant because they both were able to defend themselves.

By the same argument, patent trolls are NBD. Except, of course, we know for a fact that lots of people are extorted into paying BS fees because they can't afford to go to court.

If you tried to make the case that patent trolls are a big problem because they extort large fees from people, it would be appropriate to talk about cases where people settled and paid "BS fees". If you cite one case where the plaintiff won, and another where they lost in court, you aren't making that case very well because you haven't discussed any actual cases of the alleged harm.

Sorry, in one thread you're suggesting anti-SLAPP laws and in another (this thread) you're apparently claiming that SLAPP doesn't happen.

I'm confused.

I'm not claiming that at all - if you look above I said I acknowledge this is an issue. It's just not relevant to the cases in the OP comment.

Yes, and as I already pointed out, the root comment states:

>>>>>> Personally, I'm concerned that the individual factors of this case (i.e. Gawker being Gawker) will overshadow the principle at stake, which feels a lot more important than a gossip site.

We are discussing principles and problems that are larger than just these two cases. That's the entire thesis of the comment that started this thread.

It cited another case as representative of the real issue, which wasn't.

MJ was offered as an example of a suit that was filed despite the fact that the speech was clearly legally protected, and where the cost of the suit was rather outrageous despite this fact. It establishes a) that people sue maliciously even when they know their suit is baseless; and b) that these suits are none-the-less expensive to defend.

It's fairly obvious that (b) is concerning, and also fairly obvious that it takes an actual suit to put a price tag on this problem. That's why the MJ case was presented.

But all of this is obvious and explained in the comments above, so this is getting very pedantic, and I don't see a) what point you're trying to make, or b) how that point is at all relevant to the overall thesis of the root comment.

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