On the illegallity point, that is a job for law enforcement, not corporations to decide.
You can have a balance of press freedom and privacy of individuals, and even the US does in libel and slander laws, as well as e.g. (more recently) revenge porn legislation.
Germany and other does European nations for example have a stronger claim to personal privacy rights of individuals than the US, based on Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The European Court of Human Rights found that you cannot just publish any picture or piece of information you know but have to weigh the newsworthiness of information against the invasion of privacy such publication would mean.
E.g. paparazzos stalking somebody to a funeral of a family member is usually not newsworthy enough to overcome the personal right to privacy. Writing about somebody being gay would cross a line unless that somebody was/is publicly vocal about "gay matters" such as gay marriage legislation, gay adoption rights etc. Publishing pics of the family, especially kids, of famous people is usually a no go - except when those family members themselves engage in newsworthy activity such as coming a crime.
As it pertains to Gawker, they outed at least two high profile people as gay (Thiel, Cook), published a sex tape of Hulk Hogan and his partner, published nude paparazzo pics of various people including Justin Bieber and a slew of other things, while their sister site jezebel.com wrote pieces rather strongly condemning the publication of hacked nude pictures of Jennifer Lawrence and other in the "fappening". If only Gawker listened to Jezebel...
Frankly, I like the European way, which is certainly not free of dangers, a lot better than the US way. But famous people are people too, and are entitled to at least some privacy.
The issue here, though, is not whether Gawker's behavior should have been protected speech, but whether it's concerning for a documentary about Gawker to be canned by a studio controlled by a large company which had another aspect of its business harmed by the behavior of the subject of that documentary.
Deciding not to continue the documentary is Apple's right to free speech.
If anything you can push for legislators to apply anti monopoly laws to media and have companies split off.
To me, Apple's own streaming offering - which at least for now has sizable competition from giants such as Disney and Netflix and Amazon as well as small producers on youtube and elsewhere - is quite different from "social media" companies with their defacto "marketplaces of ideas" interfering with legal free speech of regular people, which I see with far more concern. It is also quite different to their quasi monopolist walled garden otherwise known as the App Store.
Apple really is just a minor player in the TV space right now, and far more concerning is the Disney/Fox/Hulu behemoth, where we're slowly heading into antitrust territory.
Anyone can sue anyone pretty much, that's what a free country is about.
It's not the government shutting down gawker, it's people who have money to sue them. If you think that's wrong then the government needs to change libel laws, that's easy. Similar to the section 230 issues right now, with enough political pressure you can change things.
But gawker, they were asking for trouble, and got it. There's a reason lawyers recommend you don't do stuff that they did, and have done for decades if not centuries.
Cook didn't stop someone else making a show about Gawker, he stopped the company he runs from doing so. Huge difference.
Could’ve made a great, and timely, horrible-warts-n-all show about freedom of speech and those who’d manipulate it, but Cook is not one for such exuberant boldness. Hey, I’m fine with that: last thing I want is a desire to spend any more money on their overpriced tat.
Guess it’s The People vs Larry Flynt for movie night tonight. Now where did I put the DVD…
Yet. We are talking about Apple, which is blocking Microsoft's xCloud and Google's Stadia on iOS on the grounds that Microsoft and Google are not submitting each individual game for review. Both xCloud and Stadia are just glorified video players, where you are streaming video of a game being played in a server room and sending back controls. If streaming video game video can be subject for individual approval on iOS, I don't see streaming TV shows being subject to individual review that far off.
As both of these protect you from defamation claims.
Credible media acknowledge their errors. The goal is seeking truth, not achieving perfection.
Zero-tolerance for error is the worst form of censorship.
> Gawker announced that it would not comply with the part of the court order requiring the removal of the post and associated commentary because it deemed the order "risible and contemptuous of centuries of First Amendment jurisprudence." Gawker removed the video itself, but linked readers to another site hosting the video