We can't let distaste for Gawker in particular blind us to the underlying narrative here. I think Popehat[1] summed up the deeply concerning issues this Gawker mess has brought to the fore:
For most of us the scary part of the story is that our legal system is generally receptive to people abusing it to suppress speech. Money helps do that, but it's not necessary to do it. A hand-to-mouth lunatic with a dishonest contingency lawyer can ruin you and suppress your speech nearly as easily as a billionaire. Will you prevail against a malicious and frivolous defamation suit? Perhaps sooner if you're lucky enough to be in a state with a good anti-SLAPP statute.
Since when is a legitimately selected jury, with no external influences, finding Gawker guilty "abusive suppression of speech" or "malicious and frivolous"? Bollea likely would have won the case easily even if he hadn't received outside funding; the violation was just that egregious.
I have a hard time taking seriously the "underlying narrative" various self-interested news sources are trying to weave.
Bollea's lawyer (paid for by Thiel, and who should be disbarred for his clear violation of basic legal ethical standards) made multiple trial decisions that punished Gawker at Bollea's expense.
Besides, the specific case is a red herring -- Thiel simply got very lucky that one of the many lawsuits he was secretly funding against Gawker was so cut-and-dry. Had he not gotten that dropped in his lap, he would have continued funding other secret nuisance lawsuits until he was able to find something else with a substantial judgement (and then would have done what he did in this case -- announce that it was him in order to produce a chilling effect on other news organizations reporting negatively about his investments). You can't be simultaneously in favor of the legality of what Thiel did and against this: http://www.motherjones.com/media/2015/10/mother-jones-vander...
Thiel's intent was to bankrupt Gawker by secretly funding many cases such as the Mother Jones example. Again, he got lucky with the Bollea case (not only in that it was quite egregious, but that it provided an excellent framework to recruit unwitting members of the public to his defense by exploiting our cognitive tendency to break conflict into false dichotomies -- being anti-Gawker doesn't mean I'm pro-Thiel).
Are you in favor of or against someone secretly funding multiple lawsuits in order to destroy a company producing negative press about their investment vehicles? That's the question that actually matters.
The reason it's awful isn't because they got punished for doing something wrong. It's that they'd done that stuff and more before and got away with it. Because only someone with Thiel-style money could make it stick.
So yeah, they were awful and yeah they deserved to be put out of business but _also_ they only went out of business because they annoyed the wrong guy.
In a better world, Thiel's intervention wouldn't have made a difference, but it did.
This is nothing new. It's probably been going on since the advent of the judicial system. Would this be A-OK if the lawyers had taken the case pro bono? Or would we be crying about how good lawyers should have to charge people equally?
Seems to me that the billion dollar media conglomerates could have funded Gawker's lawyers to protect their ability to release people's sex tapes.
How about the people they destroyed? Don't forget Gawker bullied a lot of people over those 14 years. They picked the wrong fight this time and lost. This is an eventuality for all bullies(picking the wrong fight that is.)
The main objection I've seen (not speaking for the GP comment here, just in general) is the precedent that courts are now allowed to determine newsworthiness.
That is, with enough money backing your cause, you can get information that people previously deemed newsworthy suppressed.
I have no love for Gawker, but I'm on the fence about this assertion.
A private sex tape shouldn't be newsworthy. Same with sexual orientation of anybody. They were gossip trash privacy invaders. Acted like bullies and got what they deserved.
But that's precisely the question. Who gets to determine what is newsworthy and what isn't?
Can the government decide that independent footage of American soldiers committing crimes abroad is "not newsworthy" and suppress it, sue the organization, demand that it be pulled from the Internet?
I don't know you and I share a private sex tape of yours with my huge audience. We all agree that I should end up in jail, but somehow is "not that bad" because it was a company the one who did it? That's not a good example for the kids. Bullies should be punished wether they are a person or a company.
Videos of soldiers committing crimes are proof of a felony. A video of Hulk Hogan having sex or Thiel being gay is private life. Soldiers are funded by our taxes. Apples and Oranges.
Consider the alternative. Can the government decide that the videotape of a prominent opposition leader (or a leader of a social movement) having sex with his mistress is "newsworthy" material and surreptitiously deliver it to reporters?
Why or why not?
We can't abolish laws solely based on objection that the government can hypothetically abuse it. The government can easily abuse the absence of law, after all.
They could have reported on the sex act in question, what got them in trouble was that they showed video footage of it. That's very different than simply reporting it as news.
How about I film you and your parent having sex, then post it on a popular site without your knowledge of the video or permission, then refuse to take it down when you ask, and then I'll ask you how you feel about gawker getting destroyed.
I don't like Peter Thiel, but he wasn't the judge or the jury.