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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."
The same basic concerns are the same as at the beginning of this process. On the one hand, Gawker was terrible, and we haven't really lost much by losing them. On the other hand, a world where billionaires can functionally drive media sources into bankruptcy by proxy lawsuits is potentially incredibly chilling on free speech. And in the case of the Hulk Hogan lawsuit, the jury should at least have been made aware that Hogan was being bankrolled by Thiel (since it goes to Hogan's credibility and sincerity as a witness), although I imagine that that wouldn't have actually impacted that decision at all since Gawker's behavior was unambiguously terrible. But, a general rule that people should have to disclose in a lawsuit when they are being paid by someone else to run it isn't crazy.
Also the idea that Gawker didn't know why Thiel doesn't like them( as sort of implied in the summary) is ridiculous. Thiel doesn't like Gawker because they wrote articles outing him as gay and then repeatedly writing more articles with it in the headline: http://gawker.com/335894/peter-thiel-is-totally-gay-people.
Stop defending gawker. They were wrong and the courts agreed they were wrong. No one needed to "find weak points to exploit".
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Show trials are a common thing in this world. They get the plaintiff publicity and sympathy to help them relaunch a career in show biz and the defendant sells papers/clicks. I suppose you could complain the courts shouldn't be used for this, but it's popular enough with the masses that it's allowed and it's mostly harmless. Gawker's mistake was not knowing Thiel was gunning for them. .
I keep saying this, but Theil didn't hate Gawker for outing him (he's a billionaire, at his level there are no consequences actual crimes let alone legal behavior), he hated them for writing stories about his shady business dealings. Gawker did a lot of tabloid journalism but they used it to fund a lot of real journalism; a tradition as old as journalism itself. What we old folk used to call muckracking.
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A tortious interference claim is for wrongful and improper actions. Funding a lawsuit can hardly be considered wrongful or improper. Close all the courthouses forever if it is.
Gawker's conduct was wrongful and improper. That's why they lost.
Also, in a bankruptcy you can't just decide not to sell to someone you’re prejudiced against. There's are legal responsibilities. If he bid the highest and has the most credible plan for the assets, it will be very hard to justify (in court) not selling them to him.
No, not a spy, a paid troll. I'd never mistake you for a spy. It take balls to be a spy.
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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"
That's not the point. The point is that if every rich asshole is capable to run a media company into the ground "just because", we are in deep trouble.
So far it’s only one media company — the one full of assholes that couldn't be bothered to follow any rules. It turned out that following at least one rule was important.
the Saudis would have moved against an American billionaire? You're simply not allowed to be that naive about how the world works. Laws apply differently to the ultra rich.
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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.
I don't recall the judge hiding at all. I even recall him openly telling gawker to cut their shit out and take down the video.
All gawker had to do was follow what the judge ordered.
Thiel bankrolling the whole thing has nothing to do with why they lost; it was their hubris and arrogance is why.