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BuzzFeed Unmasks Mastermind Who Urged Peter Thiel To Destroy Gawker (buzzfeed.com)
One day in 2011 a 26-year-old approached Peter Thiel and said "Look, I think if we datamined Gawker's history, we could find weak points that we could exploit in the court of law," according to the author of a new book. An anonymous reader quotes BuzzFeed News:
Peter Thiel's campaign to ruin Gawker Media was conceived and orchestrated by a previously unknown associate who served as a middleman, allowing the billionaire to conceal his involvement in the bankrolling of lawsuits that eventually drove the New York media outlet into bankruptcy. BuzzFeed News has confirmed the identity of that mystery conspirator, known in Thiel's inner circle as "Mr. A," with multiple sources who said that he provided the venture capitalist and Facebook board member with a blueprint to covertly attack Gawker in court. That man, an Oxford-educated Australian citizen named Aron D'Souza, has few known connections to Thiel, but approached him in 2011 with an elaborate proposal to use a legal strategy to wipe out the media organization. That plot ultimately succeeded... D'Souza was aware of Thiel's public comments likening Valleywag to al-Qaeda, and presented a brazen idea: Pay someone or create a company to hire lawyers to go after Gawker.
TechCrunch reported earlier this month that Gawker's old posts "will be captured and saved by the non-profit Freedom of the Press Foundation," which was co-founded in 2012 by the late John Perry Barlow. But in addition, the Gawker estate "continues to threaten possible legal action against Thiel, and hopes to begin discovery to examine the billionaire's motivations for secretly funding his legal war," the article concludes. If a New York bankruptcy court approves, and if the process "unearths anything of meaning, the estate may have grounds to sue Thiel on the grounds of tortious interference, the use of legal means to purposely disrupt a business.
"To head that off, Thiel bid for the remaining Gawker assets -- including the flapship domain Gawker.com, its archive, and outstanding legal claims, like those against himself -- though Holden has made it known that he may block any sale to Thiel, no matter how much the venture capitalist is willing to bid."
TechCrunch reported earlier this month that Gawker's old posts "will be captured and saved by the non-profit Freedom of the Press Foundation," which was co-founded in 2012 by the late John Perry Barlow. But in addition, the Gawker estate "continues to threaten possible legal action against Thiel, and hopes to begin discovery to examine the billionaire's motivations for secretly funding his legal war," the article concludes. If a New York bankruptcy court approves, and if the process "unearths anything of meaning, the estate may have grounds to sue Thiel on the grounds of tortious interference, the use of legal means to purposely disrupt a business.
"To head that off, Thiel bid for the remaining Gawker assets -- including the flapship domain Gawker.com, its archive, and outstanding legal claims, like those against himself -- though Holden has made it known that he may block any sale to Thiel, no matter how much the venture capitalist is willing to bid."
Well, except your version of events never happened. Gizmodo didn't steal an iPhone prototype from anyone. Some guy lost it by leaving it in a bar and they purchased the lost prototype from the guy who found it and did a teardown on it. They didn't steal it and they didn't try to destroy the career of the guy who lost it.
I wasn't a fan of them purchasing it at the time and I'm still not. But what happened is a far cry from your description of what happened. But don't let the facts get in the way.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
... a world where billionaires can functionally drive media sources into bankruptcy by proxy lawsuits is potentially incredibly chilling on free speech...
That might be a problem it it starts happening to media sources that don't deserve to be shut down. Right now, the only speech being "chilled" is publishing celebrity sex videos — and then only in combination with many years of other various bad behavior.
It is sad that this got modded up as informative.
Well, except your version of events never happened. Gizmodo didn't steal an iPhone prototype from anyone. Some guy lost it by leaving it in a bar and they purchased the lost prototype from the guy who found it and did a teardown on it. They didn't steal it and they didn't try to destroy the career of the guy who lost it.
I wasn't a fan of them purchasing it at the time and I'm still not. But what happened is a far cry from your description of what happened. But don't let the facts get in the way.
Point of fact, one finding lost property doesn't make one the true owner of said property.
Looking at California law, http://codes.findlaw.com/ca/pe..., it is clear that in this case the person who found the iPhone and didn't return it is guilty of theft, and consequently Gawker was handling stolen property.
On this point, jcr is 100% correct, and dirk is 0% correct.
Technically, they received stolen property.
Considering that Gizmodo paid $5000 cash for it, it easily exceeded the $950 threshold below which "receiving stolen property" is a misdemeanor.