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Gawker Founder Nick Denton Files For Bankruptcy (nydailynews.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from New York Daily News: Gawker's founder Nick Denton filed for personal bankruptcy Monday after a Florida appeals court refused to give him an emergency order that would block wrestler Hulk Hogan from collecting on a $140 million jury verdict. The District Court of Appeal in Lakeland, Fla., denied a request by Gawker and Denton to stay a ruling by lower court judge Pamela Campbell -- who said Hogan could start collecting on his award immediately. But declaring bankruptcy will give Denton protection from collectors including Hogan, whose real name is Terry Bollea. In the filing, Denton says he has assets of $10 to $50 million and liabilities of $100 to $500 million. His debts includes $125 million that he owes to Hogan, an $11.5 million loan that he took out on June 10 from Silicon Valley Bank, a $50,000 loan he took from his 401(k) at Gawker and his Time Warner Cable bill for $120.88. The jury's March verdict was the result of Gawker's decision to publish a tape on the internet of Hogan having sex with a friend's wife. The former WWF star said it was an invasion of his privacy. Gawker filed for bankruptcy shortly after the jury's verdict, but Denton resisted, asking the bankruptcy court to protect him as part of the process. The federal court refused. Now that the Florida courts have opened the door for Hogan to start collecting from Denton, he is expected to follow Gawker into federal bankruptcy court in lower Manhattan.
Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy!
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n/t
The scum has it coming to him, good and hard.
That's a real Sophie's Choice trying to decide who to root for in this one. But in any case, you can't just post sex tapes online without consent from everyone in the actual tape. Remember that next time Kim Kardashian has a sex tape 'leaked' and somehow nobody gets sued over it.
You fucking political shill, that's not what the Citizen's United ruling was about.
Denton says he has assets of $10 to $50 million and liabilities of $100 to $500 million. His debts includes...a $50,000 loan he took from his 401(k) at Gawker and his Time Warner Cable bill for $120.88...
Was there a point in listing a $120 cable bill as a liability for a man allegedly worth millions? I hope they didn't forget to count that Starbucks gift card he got for Christmas with his assets. Fucking seriously...
This wasn't a First Amendment issue at all. You have no right to publish video footage of people having sex unless you have their permission.
I wonder how you'd feel about a live feed of you masturbating beamed into your mom's house? Thought so.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Really The whole bill of rights!!!
Drama Queen Much?
The first amendment covers a citizen and the government, NOT citizen and a citizen.
It does not apply.
Glad you like Citizens United it is a blow to the Democratic Process.
And the Constitution has rules to change it if the people do not like it.
And change it back if we do not like the change.
He (hulk) could make a claim he is an individual and entitled to superior claim since the banks are covered by ability to write down loans on a normal and customary basis, but this is an extraordinary circumstance for him.
The lawsuit was filed against Gawker, not Denton. How is Denton responsible for paying a ruling against Gawker? Or is Denton just a shitty businessman that took out huge personal loans himself?
I'm assuming that this Silicon Valley Bank must do some kind of background check and doesn't just go handing out an $11.5 million loan to anyone. The original trial verdict and the damages were set way back in March. With the slim chance of this appeal working, why would the bank even opt to give him a loan in June?
Seems like either he hid that verdict from the bank, or someone at the bank didn't do their homework, or both. That large of a failed loan could be enough to put some smaller banks out of business.
Is he not shielded by the corporate structure of Gawker? Surely he didn't set up a company where ending up in court was inevitable without shielding his personal assets from liability right?
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
The sad reality is that Gawker's broken economic model isn't that different from the the others, and ALL of the mass media (that I know about) is similarly broken. Gawker wanted lots of eyeballs to sell to advertisers, and the website just pushed the edge too hard in their quest for more eyeballs. They fell off, went boom.
The rest of the mass media is competing for eyeballs with Trump antics and disaster porn. Still the same quest for eyeballs to sell.
Gawker went one way, but only a minor difference that Trump has milked the free publicity all the way to the so-called Republican nomination. More serious difference when terrorists milk the free publicity. More like a death spiral on both sides. The mass media is killing itself trying to give the biggest and best free publicity to the terrorists, while the terrorists are killing other people and just trying to kill enough this time to get more publicity than last time.
Alternative economic model to address that last problem: Stop competing for eyeballs when that is supporting the terrorists. Set up a special non-competitive news office (SNCNO?) to handle such publicity-seeking manufactured news. If a story falls into the terrorism-support bucket, then this SNCNO will handle it. They will produce unified reports of the terrorism, and all of the mass media outlets will be allowed to use as much or as little of those reports as they want to. The reports will be accurate consensus of the news, but with no sensationalism or competitive considerations. This economic model would put the shoe on the other foot. Everyone would still need to report the real news, but there would be no incentive to play up the terrorism parts, and the incentive to compete for more eyeballs would be on the REAL news, not the fake manufactured news.
Other economic models available upon polite request. Too bad I don't have an economic model to sell them. They are just too intuitively obvious to the most casual observer (in the literal, not idiomatic, sense).
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
But when that traitor snowden publishes tons of documents critical to our security, then suddenly its okay??
Yes, it is, because he was showing crimes being committed above him...
Had this sex tape shown Hogan killing someone, then it would have been ok to publish...
Fuck Gawker and everyone who help this shit rag to exist.
Let the other guy get the money that comes from those eyeball baiting news stories?
Yeah, let me sell that to Fox News and CNN, see how that goes....
Well I don't agree with that. I want my killings to remain private.
Of course.
Only the ultra rich and corporations get to walk out on their debts in Soviet Amerika
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Depending on which state they were in at the time it was recorded, remember that adultery is illegal in some states and can include jail time. In some states it's a crime without punishment and/or a cause for divorce without the expense of alimony.
This could be a case were a public figure was engaged in a crime which is totally different.
Set up a special non-competitive news office (SNCNO?) to handle such publicity-seeking manufactured news
I think you either misspelled "NPR" or "BBC" but I can't decide which country you're from;)
Also: blowing people up with bombs and shooting people is news. There's an old adage from the newspaper era "If it bleeds, it leads" which predates television.
Lastly, if stopping terrorism is your goal, maybe we could stop invading/bombing foreign countries? We've not tried that in over a decade -- it might even work if you give the strategy enough time!
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Yes, you see the problem, so at least you are a sufficiently casual observer of that aspect.
The implementation path does seem quite difficult. Let's say you could get some sort of consensus among the responsible news organizations (if any still exist), then how do you get the bad boys to come along? (I'm sure that FAUX "news" is bad, but these days CNN may be transcending the very notion of "bad".) Appeal to their patriotism? "We have to show Trump's empty podium! An actual speech from Bernie Sanders doesn't have any marketable eyeballs!"
You can't ask for the government to encourage anything along these lines. Absolutely proper to scream about censorship whenever the government steps into such a mess. Too complicated a "news story" to remember when the government had some positive influence on news coverage. Actually, even if you gave the news-as-public-service-not-profit-center guidelines some credit for creating modern journalistic ideals, you would be hard pressed to defend the ultimate results.
Be nice if you had a constructive thought or suggestion, however. Don't strain yourself on my behalf (though I'll continue to strain myself on the nation's behalf).
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Am I the only one that thinks a $140m settlement is a bit steep for a sex tape of two meth addicts?!
Most linux users don't know this, but the man pages were named after Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris fsck'ing hates noobs!
You have no right to publish video footage of people having sex unless you have their permission.
This is simply not true. The answer is "it depends". To post such a video with no permission of the legal owner of the video you'd need a public interest. For instance, if someone taped Bill Clinton getting a BJ from Monica Lewinsky in 1996, then it got published after Bill gave his "I did not have sexual relations" quote, it'd be legal because there's a compelling public interest.
Of course that doesn't apply here. Hulk Hogan screwing his friends wife isn't in the public's interest.
Adultery is illegal in New York where gawker is located and in Florida where it happened although rarely prosecuted.
In a democratic republic, it's necessary for the people to watch their hired watchmen, because nobody else will. Snowden's "treachery" was an act of patriotism and -- not coincidentally -- of self-sacrifice.
Conversely there's no public interest in the disclosure of Hulk Hogan's sex tape. That puts it on different legal footing.
His debts includes $125 million that he owes to Hogan, an $11.5 million loan that he took out on June 10
IANAL but I think the bank that loaned him the money can probably nail him to the wall for fraud. It's one thing to take out a loan and go bankrupt, and quite another to take out a loan when you plan on declaring bankruptcy a month later. Any decent lawyer can probably make a case for intent to defraud here. Pretty sure he didn't specify this on his loan application...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
It's spelled NHK here, but their economic model is broken for other reasons.
I'm trying to focus on the distinctions among types of news. I think it is perfectly reasonable to compete for eyeballs on the basis of investigations into real problems. They used to call them "Scoops" in those pre-TV days you mentioned. These days, the speed of the Internet has basically destroyed that economic model. There are also naturally occurring news stories like floods and earthquakes where good news coverage is downright helpful in terms of responding or preventing panic. The value of such news is clearly positive.
In contrast, there are fake stories, like every controversial and idiotic thing Trump says. Great for gathering eyeballs, but I think you would be hard-pressed to make any argument for a positive value, even though the Donald has milked the free publicity to become an actual nominee of an actual major party Did you know that they estimated the value of ads corresponding to the free news coverage that Trump received in getting the nomination? The total was around $2 billion. That's billion with a "B" and dollars as in that thing Trump doesn't want us to know how few he actually has.
In the case of the terrorists, the value of their free publicity is much more negative to the rest of society. I would argue that they are distorting the entire society of their enemies. The mass media is profiting by acting as their accomplices, and that is WRONG.
You raised a new issue, but it is NOT mine. If you demand that I comment on it, I will say that terrorism is a tactic, not a stoppable thing. You can only make it more or less useful as a tactic, and the mass media is actively making it more useful. The "terrorists" would be fools not to take advantage of our weaknesses.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
You have no right to publish video footage of people having sex unless you have their permission.
Yes you do! Read the 1st, it says NO LAW! The issue is inseparable from the 1st Amendment. The video was made by a participant, not a stranger with a hidden camera. The judge that ruled against him is an asshole and acted in direct violation. He should be removed from the bench immediately! And his assets should be seized to pay Gawker's debts. He is a criminal. This is a ruse to protect the rich and powerful. And once again they win. And the internet becomes more lame because of it. Let's hope he bounces back, and uses an untraceable pseudo name that will never get taken down again.
Depending on which state they were in at the time it was recorded, remember that adultery is illegal in some states and can include jail time.
The reality here is "public interest". Fornication and adultery are technically illegal, and rarely, if ever enforced.
In other words, you're really reaching here. No court would rule (and this didn't happen) that there was any public interest at work here. The lawyer would be laughed out of the court for trying such a tactic.
Anyway, the laws against adultery are almost certainly unconstitutional.
LOL, a film of people having sex is porn, and porn was declared not to be speech years and years and years ago.
Seeing someone implode who has been working hard to dumb down the masses is very enjoyable indeed.
Even more fun to have the takedown, done WWE-style by a "professional" wrestler.
On the other hand: If it was a Jessica Alba and Natalie Portman sex tape, there would be great public interest in the tape being released.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
*I* wouldn't mind. *You* however might want to invest in some eye bleaching technology.
What do you mean? He is already in his Mom's house...
Read it yourself, idiot. It says CONGRESS shall make no law. Got it? CONGRESS did not make this law, it was a civil trial using COMMON law.
You want to establish a 'Ministry of Truth' to determine which stories are legit and can be covered by news organizations? What could go wrong?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Everybody (except congress) is bound by the laws set by CONGRESS you dumb fuck! It even says so in one of the amendments. The law applies to EVERYBODY(except congress)! If you are not a congress person, or a rich lobbyist, you must obey the law! So stuff it in yer ass!
Geriatric sex - is there someone into that?
They both are (or at least look like) they are in their 80ies
A man sleeping with someone that isn't his wife isn't necessarily adultery. Many people live very happy lives with values different than puritan Christians.
Beside the point: this is a civil dispute, not a legal one.
"Congress shall pass no law" - Congress has not passed on law infringing on the amendment, so that argument is moot.
"You have no right to publish video footage of people having sex unless you have their permission" - not true: however this falls down under the question of "should you publish". One entity has caused harm to another for it's own gain, not because "it was in the public's best interest".
This is the difference between Snowdens leaks and this case: Snowden released document that may cause harm to others, however the information was in the public's best interest - evidence of a government obscuring the spying that was being conducted on it's populous. This case was a media company trying to make money of a sex tape by selling it as news.
There is a big difference in these cases and why the judge ruled this way. Try thinking about the reasons before stating everyone is wrong but you, and calling anyone that disagrees with you disparaging names.
2/10 on the troll scale. Weak.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Hired goons?
Monstar L
This is all about Peter Theil, who is bankrupting Hogan's case.
That's not why Hogan sued at all, but more importantly Peter Theil is funding the whole thing in retrobution for Gawker outing him as gay around 2008 (while he was funding GOP which has anti-gay policies).
Gawker outed Theil because he was a hypocrite.
Hogan sued about another video.
Here's an explanation:
Thank you Dave Raggett
Not as good/interesting as Prender was,it all seems to have gone quiet about what was happening to prender and steel etc,did/have they been dis-barred ? Jailed for contempt ? Or I'd the irs still chasing their case ?
That case sold loads of popcorn !!!
"You have no right to publish video footage of people having sex unless you have their permission."
How do you reconcile this position with the sex-tape cases that have been decided in favor of the publisher?
AFAIK, it is if the man is married.
The fact that a law has a religious origin is not an arguement against the definition of the act. Nor is a persons belief that such laws are unjust.
Adultery Definition: Voluntary sexual intercourse between a married person and another person who is not their married spouse.
Can you provide an example of when a married man having sexual intercourse with someone whom is not his spouse is not classed as an adultery?
No, that is not what I wrote.
Given your comment, is there any reason I should regard you as intellectually honest or writing in good faith?
My first suggestion is that you might start by READING what I actually wrote. If you cannot understand some part of it, then you should feel free to ask a question. If you cannot understand any of it, then perhaps it is too complicated an idea for you to understand. I will still attempt to answer questions, but my time is limited.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
I think the previous AC is talking about open marriages. I don't know where the legal definition stands on the issue, but I think plenty of people would agree that if a man has -permission- from his wife to sleep with other women, it's not adultery.
The Hogan lawsuit was paid for by Peter Thiel, whom Gawker/Denton dared to cross.
Bottom line is: death to independent journalism and all money to the already wealthy and powerful. Think what you're told to think via the pre-approved breadcrumbs of information allowed for you by a handful of one-percenters. This is hand-in-glove with the willful destruction of public education in red states, as an ignorant populace is a controllable populace.
USA! indeed.
A law that cannot be enforced is effectively not a law even if the legislature has yet to remove it from the books. Just as that deed restriction that says that you cannot sell your suburban home to people of color will neither be enforced nor serve to protect you from being charged with housing discrimination.
Lawrence v. Kansas put an end to adultery as a crime. Yes, it can still be a basis for divorce, but despite TMZ's best efforts, prospective divorces are not matters of public interest that justify the non-consensual publication of sex tapes and the like -- my proof: there's no adultery exception to anti-revenge pron laws.
Oh fuck off. Every right you have as an American citizen, even those 'enumerated in the Constitution', has limits. "No law" never means "absolutely no law ever". It means no law that the interpreters of the Constitution (ultimately the Supreme Court) does not find that the Constitution supports a compelling public interest in allowing. Try to start a religion that involves human sacrifice, or even something like heroin use, and tell me how well that goes because of your fucking freedom of religion. Or try to buy a rocket launcher and argue that your right to bear arms means the government can't stop you. If you don't like it, go be an anarchist on some goddamn island and let the rest of us who actually want a civilized world live without your extremism.
Snowden published documents critical to protecting our security.
Its not hard to get free publicity when the Media is desperate for you to not see Voter Fraud and the absolute cest pool that is the Democratic National Committee and what they did to get hillary on the podium. All funded by..... Media Billionaires including the Koch brothers, odd I thought they were REP but nope, love this murderous traitor Secretary of state. Feel free to watch Clinton Money movie, or ask why all the dead people in the last 4 weeks around the Clintons.
Africa may never recover from what she did selling Merica to despots there.
America may never recover from the sheer number of Black men in prison learning a trade, all courtesy of the Clintons.
You may never recover, once you realize what that 1996 bill clinton law change that allowed 3 guys to own all the news outlets in the country. Who are all in collusion to keep you in the dark about their paid for pet that is currently having public seizures. Why did she leave that debate stand for 30 minutes during the debate again? Reagan was sick, and they signed all types of stuff he couldn't remember with him in there.
I am seriously looking for another country to move too, but that clinton foundation thuggery reaches far..
When the rich go bankrupt and come out on the other side, they're still always rich. They always have a couple million tucked away, rich friends and partners who can give them cheap loans, and usually even their names and reputations (even bad ones) that can pick them back up.
Are there any cases of ultra rich people actually falling down to a normal level, excluding drugs/alcohol problems?
Each case is different, but you have no blanket right to publish sex tapes.
Let's say this tape fell into the hands of the National Enquirer. They would have printed a story about the existence of the tape (probably lurid) and would have included a screen grab of a clothed portion of it, at most. The lawyers would have been happy, because in litigation of that sort, truth is an absolute defense and all they'd have to do is show the sex tape in court. But, they also know that the tape violates community standards for public display and would fall into one of those First Amendment exceptions that Wikipedia covers pretty well. Instead, Nick Denton got himself destroyed. This is why you hire lawyers and listen to them, if you want to survive.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
How many videos of people having sex were there in snowden's documents, again?
And those people would be wrong in NY and FL. Your personal morals are irrelevant when determining if something is against the law or not.
http://law.justia.com/codes/ne...
http://www.leg.state.fl.us/sta...
Of course you'd have to really piss someone in law enforcement/prosecution and be remarkably law abiding in all other areas for someone to try to get a conviction under those laws - but they do in fact exist as laws.
Didn't write it out, but strongly implied that something should be done about 'fake news stories' being reported. Also in favor of 'alternative economic models', smells strongly of authoritarianism.
I suspect you started this thought process by lying to yourself. You have no place to criticise intellectual honesty. I quote:
Sounds like you want to ban free economic actors from covering a category of 'news', just as I assert. SNCNO is the 'Ministry of Truth' and all news falls under it 5 years after it's established. Study some dam history you wanna be fascist.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
There are still laws making inter-racial marriages illegal. However, the SCOTUS ruled such laws violate the Constitution in the Loving decision. Various Sodomy laws that outlaw consensual sexual acts outside of male/female penis/vagina sex illegal have been ruled invalid by SCOTUS. Same with any law outlawing abortion (see the SCOTUS tearing apart the TX law that pretty much outlawed abortion).
Simply because there are laws making something illegal in a state does not mean those laws actually hold any value and be successfully used to convict someone.
Now a civil case is different, and that would fall more under contract law wherein both parties agreed to not make sex with other people outside the marriage contract. That is where adultery would be relevant. Of course, if the person being sued for divorce can show the person filing for divorce had agreed to such acts, then the case falls apart (at least as far as alimony etc goes...usually the divorce will go through).
Do you actually believe what you wrote there? If so, then you are ignoring reality to an amazing degree or you are unable to perceive and understand reality. In either of those cases, there is no reason to attempt a discussion.
If you do NOT believe what you wrote, then there is some basis for a discussion around the question "Why?" The most rational reason would be if someone is paying you, but the problem in that case is that you are probably not supposed to admit it.
Seems to be an impasse. Let me predict you will shout the same crazy stuff, but louder. Perhaps you could shift to all caps?
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
No, once again you are twisting and distorting what I actually wrote, perhaps projecting your own fears.
Maybe you should try to figure out what my sig means in terms of my underlying philosophy. As it applies to this topic, and though you don't seem to justify the effort, I would summarize it that free competition is a fundamentally good thing, but you should not let your true enemies twist the rules of the competitive game against you.
Far more than your reply merits, but have you considered the overall economic ramifications of letting the terrorists make so many people live in fear? For example, have you flown on a plane recently? As Bruce Schneier put it in Data and Goliath , we are completely redesigning our airports around our fears of possible terrorist attacks--and we are still failing to prevent those attacks. And yet, each and every time one of those attacks succeeds, we reward the attackers with vast amounts of free publicity and then punish ourselves by spending more money in the insane quest for perfect security.
Freedom involves a certain degree of risk, but it's hard to assess the reasonable risks when you are too busy sh!tt!ng in your pants (or even weeping in sympathy) in response to the sensationalized news.
The end result is the rise of authoritarian liars like Donald Trump. Many of his followers believe they will have perfect security as soon as he wins. Reality begs to differ.
If you don't like my constructive suggestion, let's hear yours. I'm not holding my breath.
Actually, perhaps you should begin by trying to understand what I ACTUALLY wrote. Seems extremely unlikely, but maybe you could come up with an improvement or three. It's not like any new idea is perfect and immaculate as it develops, eh?
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
You say "You have no right" but I'll argue that you have every right. Information is free. Provided you're not the person actually filming, legally regulating what 1's and 0's are or are not legal to distribute is not only futile and technologically impossible, but a waste of taxpayer dollars and court resources. I, for one, am laughing my ass off, because regardless of gawker, no matter how much Hogan sues and whines because he's an insecure loser, the internet will never forget and that video can never be taken back.
The Bill of Rights issue here is not a 1st Amendment issue. Gawker clearly violated fundamental rights, including rights arising under the 9th Amendment (rights retained by the people), and the 10th Amendment (rights reserved to the people), such as the right to privacy.
The real Bill of Rights issue here is the attempt to evade punishment by declaring bankruptcy. Bankruptcy law is enacted under the authority of Congress, which is a lessor legal authority to the Bill of Rights. It follows that one can not use bankruptcy law to evade the consequences of violating fundamental rights - that's effectively making Congress a higher legal authority than the Bill of Rights. If that were case, Congress could prevent the operation of any right, simply by passing a law that interfered with that right, including interfering with punishment for such a violation. That contradicts the Bill of Rights, and hence - like all contradictions in the law - is inherently unethical practice of law (itself a violation of the Bill of Rights).
For the judge to allow evasion of the penalty through bankruptcy is a violation of his or her oath to uphold the Bill of Rights, and unethical practice of law. For Gawker's lawyers to even ask for this is a similar violation.
But until someone challenges it, which won't happen until someone gets charged, which won't happen until the situation I mentioned comes up which never will, they still exist as laws.
The media doesn't decide whether a law is valid or invalid, if the argument is "they can report X because it is a crime, but not Y because it is not a crime" then what other than the current law as written are they supposed to use to determine whether something is a crime?