Sued for posting a celebrity's private sex video that they didn't even know was taped?


I'm not sure how anyone can decry the same thing happening to Jennifer Lawrence but support what Gawker did.

Oh believe me, I'm fully on-board the 'gawker (particularly Denton) are scum' train but Peter Thiel weaponising someone else's lawsuit still doesn't sit right with me.

They already announced they're selling to Ziff-Davis, so Gawker's going nowhere at all.

Yeah, Gawker sucks but Thiel sucks at least as much, probably more, and literally paid Hogan million to sue them specifically to put them out of business because of a personal vendetta (they outed him a few years ago, stay classy Gawker).


Between bottom feeding tabloid journalism and super-rich Randian libertarian wielding massive political and economic power I'd take the tabloid any day.

I think the bigger issue isn't the possible future implications for the first amendment, but the fact that you can weaponize someone else's lawsuit at all. It just seems inherently fucked up to me that more money can and does buy you a much better chance at a favorable verdict; it seems completely anathema to the very concept of justice. But no one seems to want to do anything about it, and it's just kind of accepted.

And it's hopeless that it will ever change, isn't it? All these huge and powerful law firms, and old and well-respected law schools have a huge stake in things staying the way they are.

Would you have felt better about it if they had lost the case to someone who wasn't rich?

Yeah this defending Gawker makes no sense.

If someone who was wronged runs out of money to continue a lawsuit, the worst thing that could happen is a wealthy person steps in to pay the legal bills?

I'd feel better if billionaire Libertarians couldn't buy the result they want in the legal system by proxy.

Fuck Gawker, they're garbage muckraker shitcunts Nominal, but if you can't see how this is a horrible legal precedent to set, there's no helping you.

You're making it sound like he bribed the jury.

actually they should have been worried about oligarchs with a grudge bankrolling any and every lawsuit against them until legal costs force them to close.

Look out, there might be an oligarch under your bed!

Nick Denton: NOT an oligarch!

hahahahaha

Yes, what SolRo said! ...unless that oligarch is in bed with the Clintons, in which case it's all Bernie's fault.

Legal disputes are decided by a series of blowjobs.

Stars for Boner.

That's why I use CockBlockPlus, NoSkeet, HTTPS Underwear, and Holy Ghostery.

Still, journalism will be better without Gawker and its awful hydra heads.

J. P. Morgan is the closest I can think of.

Even if you think Gawker was legit journalism fighting the good fight, he treats his employees like absolute shit.

Whatever Denton is, he's not as much of it as Thiel, who is the cartoonishly written bad guy from a '90s movie starring Sinbad or Robin Williams.

I'm not big on Gawker as a whole, but I like io9 and (sometimes) Kotaku.

Thiel = Dustin Hoffman in Hook? Pierce Brosnan in Mrs. Doubtfire?

That doesn't make any sense. Perhaps you were thinking Kurt Fuller in No Holds Barred?

Speaking of Sinbad, those McDonalds French fries in the movie "Houseguest" looked delicious.

Think Toys or Flubber. In fact, think any movie with a one-dimensional plutocratic businessman as the villain.

Fuck you if you think I'm going to spend one second thinking about Toys.

Denton is terrible but so are his employees and they deserve to be treated like shit (no one's forcing them to work there).