What if this organisation could publish any dirt on you, could publish your most intimate pictures or details and if you were suing them, they would be fined only $10k, which they wouldn't care about because they make a lot more money abusing people?
I would say this would be justice and ordinary citizens being helpless against big business.
The ACLU is a charitable organization, and its cases have an ideological consistency. Thiel was just trying to find anything he could on Gawker (or just bury them in frivolous lawsuits if he couldn't). The cases didn't have any ideological consistency except "kill Gawker".
No, but one of the reasons "maintenance" is or was illegal is because the defendant has a right to know their accuser/opponent and their motivations, hence discovery and other pre-trial proceedings, so they can best defend themselves.
Why have a problem with that? If Gawker was not in the wrong that would've been money wasted. It's not like Hogan/Thiel wore Gawker out by whittling them down with frivolous lawsuits until they couldn't defend themselves anymore.
That's precisely what Thiel's doing though -- He just hit the jackpot with the Hogan amount. He's also funding several other suits against Gawker including one from someone who claimed to have invented email. He's like a terrible patent troll for journalism.
What jackpot? They could have gotten the insurance payout. Except they dropped that part of the suit specifically so Gawker could not use the insurance it had purchased for this reason.
Ah ok, that is not something I've seen mentioned anywhere else.
Still, Gawker is/was big enough that several frivolous lawsuits would've been unlikely to cause bankruptcy if none of them resulted in an adverse judgment. I have to think Thiel's goal was more to fire multiple shots and hope one finds its mark.
Thiel's plan was exactly to wear down Gawker by frivolous lawsuits until either they collapsed or he lucked out; that's why his legal team was searching through thousands of articles looking for people they could contact to drum up a case or fund an existing case, including the 'father of email' case. Court cases are not deterministic noise-free processes.
Citing the ACLU, if Hulk Hogan’s sex tape was somehow newsworthy, then distributing it on the internet would come under the protections of the First Amendment, and Gawker would have a right to publish it. But the jury found that this case was not about the Hulk as a public figure and that the video had no news value. The Hulk, therefore, enjoys the same rights to privacy as everyone else.
Yes, a Florida jury decided that Hulk Hogan wasn't a public figure but that the damage to his career from a sex tape was worth $55 million. Do those things seem slightly contradictory to you?
Florida jury decided that Hulk Hogan wasn't a public figure
No, it's more nuanced than that. What the ACLU is saying is that there's a difference between Hulk Hogan (the public figure) and Terry Bollea (the person), and that the jury found the video wasn't about the public figure.
As for me, I can appreciate that this feels flimsy - how can one know where the line is drawn? - yet I think the distinction exists in practice and it'd be a failure of justice to deny it.
I'll just note, the ACLU isn't saying that there's a difference -- they're saying the Jury found that there's a difference. I highly doubt the ACLU agrees, especially considering that the Florida Court of Appeals already found the video newsworthy;
Hulk Hogan’s verdict will likely be overturned by the Florida District Court of Appeal, Second Circuit. That court, in earlier overturning the trial judge’s grant of a preliminary injunction to stop the publication of the video before trial, already indicated its sympathies to the First Amendment defense. The appellate court held that (1) Hogan is a public figure, as a wrestler and reality television star; (2) Hogan has already discussed his family and sex life in the media; (3) sexually explicit content does not nullify speech’s newsworthiness, (4) the posted video and commentary are linked to a matter of public concern; and, importantly, (5) Gawker carefully published only a small excerpt of the sex tape, not the entire thing. Although a ruling on a preliminary injunction does not bind the Florida court of appeals now that it can view all of the evidence, the appellate court seems poised to disregard the trial court’s First Amendment decisions, all issued without full written orders.
The other side to that argument is, people who are wronged by Gawker need at least a billionaire to be able to get their day in court.
It should concern you that it took money from an outside source to get an alledged wrong by a massive company to litigated in front of a jury. That should be very concerning.
As for Thiel and Gawker, they're both bullies, and bullies beating the shit out of each other is just fine by me.
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.
Regarding people losing their jobs - that is a result of the terrible judgement and values of the leadership of Gawker. They are not being 'punished' for anything. Do you think that the people at Ford were 'punished' when the leadership of Ford made bad decisions that cost people their jobs?
"emotional comfort of a billionaire"
That is very dismissive. Are people worth less to you when they have more money?
How can you justify that position? There are consequences to our choices, but they don't always follow a moral principle. If I have two job offers and choose the company that ends up going bankrupt, I'm not being punished. If I'm a farmer and plant according to weather predictions which prove false, losing crops and revenue, that might be bad luck or bad judgement, but its not punishment.
Those people knew what kind of garbage the site published and decided to hitch their wagon to it. If I join a company that is in the news for doing things that sound like it might get the shit sued out of them and they eventually get sued, should I be surprised?
I am about as worried about gawker employees losing their jobs than I am about ISIS fighters losing their jobs. These guys are making money outing people and publishing sex tapes.
That's the breaks when your corporation makes criminal mistakes and it is proven in a court of law, unless you are a bank or financial firm or politician.
