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A rich person acted out his retributive fantasies by paying a law team for years to trawl through everything Gawker put out in search of litigable offenses. Tha

by andkon 10y ago

A rich person acted out his retributive fantasies by paying a law team for years to trawl through everything Gawker put out in search of litigable offenses. That's unethical on the part of the lawyers, probably, and on the part of Thiel, certainly. He never had a chance to win any personal verdict, so he went nuclear. There's no way that won't have a chilling effect on other media companies who consider whether or not to cover the stupid shit that rich people do. And it was cheap for him - around $10mm to bankrupt his mortal enemy. There's no way that other rich folks aren't going to do it as well, especially now that he's framing it as a philanthropic act.

ElComradio 10y ago
You make him sound like someone who is filing frivolous lawsuits. The Hogan case involves an outrageous invasion of privacy of extremely dubious newsworthiness, nothing at all like, say, outing a lesbian congresswoman who supports traditional marriage legislation. He's not going through looking for possible gotchas; these cases are pretty clear cut.
- andkon 10y ago
  He didn't file a frivolous lawsuit. He decided to not file a frivolous lawsuit, and instead to fund every viable lawsuit he could purely so he could bankrupt a media company that had covered him very unfavourably in the past. He'll probably keep doing it, if more such cases pop up. He isn't on Hulk Hogan's side. He's on his side, and he won. Making this about the particulars of Hogan's case is deliberately eliding the fact that Thiel didn't give a shit about Hogan's case other than that it could bankrupt Gawker.
  - ElComradio 10y ago
    If in fact there are other viable cases, in the absence of Thiel the injustice would then be that Gawker can behave badly indefinitely because most of the victims will not pay the necessary amount to litigate.
bogomipz 10y ago
Trade "rich person" for "powerful media outlet" and Gawker is the bully. And it's been cheap for Gawker over the years with their 40 million in revenue to throw any hapless victims to the wolves if they thought that it would sell advertising. And guess what it was cheap for them. How many people didn't have the money or resources to take Gawker on?
- andkon 10y ago
  The question was about whether or not it was ethical for Thiel to do what he did. Saying that Gawker did something bad to other people does not mean Thiel has an obligation to do anything, nor does it say that he acted ethically to do what he did.
imgabe 10y ago
If Gawker hadn't published anything litigable, they wouldn't have had any problems. If there is a litigable claim, there should be at least the possibility that the person who is being litigated against has done something wrong. Who cares about the motives of the person exposing the wrongdoing as long as it's accurate?
- andkon 10y ago
  There are a few ways this argument can play out: 1. You have a moral obligation to litigate moral wrongs, whether or not they happened to you. Since rich people have more money and hence more things are litigable to them, they have a moral obligation to litigate more things. In this view, Thiel obviously did the wrong thing: he avoided litigating moral wrongs for years while waiting for the right case to come up strictly about Gawker. He failed to act ethically, under this model. 2. It is morally permissible to litigate moral or even legal wrongs that were not committed to you. It being permissible means it's a supererogatory feature of your moral life, in that you don't have to do it. It goes beyond the call of duty to sue Gawker for what they did to Hogan. But without a moral obligation to do so, you can't say that it could ever override your other obligations to behave ethically. Retribution, which this clearly was, is not an obviously ethical motive that would mean we should wholesale excuse what Thiel did—even though it may have been a good act to punish Gawker for Hogan, it was morally wrong to use the legal system strictly for retribution. 3. It is your moral obligation to litigate all litigable acts. This is absurd, prima facie: all our money and time should go towards litigation? Nah. In other words, yeah, the motives matter. Thiel went above and beyond the call of duty and acted unethically, in an especially egregious and self-serving way available only to billionaires, along the way.
  - imgabe 10y ago
    Another way to look at it is this: It happened. For the most part, everyone is better off because it did. If that weren't the case, we would have done something to stop it. "Moral obligations" are made-up. Obligated by whom? What happens if someone doesn't fulfill their moral obligation? Nothing, right? Maybe someone writes a comment on the Internet saying they should be ashamed, but that's pretty much it. Feel free to pontificate all you like about the morality of it. That won't change the fact that it did happen and will happen again unless a force powerful enough to stop it chooses to do so. Ultimately, the whole point of having a justice system is to sort out these questions. Anybody can sue anyone else for any reason. We depend on the courts to sort out the ones that are valid from the ones that are invalid. In this case, the courts deemed this a valid lawsuit. If you disagree with the validity of it or feel the methods by which the courts make these judgments is flawed, then that's one thing, but the rules of the system allow any lawsuit to be brought for any reason.

by andkon 10y ago

ElComradio 10y ago

You make him sound like someone who is filing frivolous lawsuits. The Hogan case involves an outrageous invasion of privacy of extremely dubious newsworthiness, nothing at all like, say, outing a lesbian congresswoman who supports traditional marriage legislation. He's not going through looking for possible gotchas; these cases are pretty clear cut.

andkon 10y ago
He didn't file a frivolous lawsuit. He decided to not file a frivolous lawsuit, and instead to fund every viable lawsuit he could purely so he could bankrupt a media company that had covered him very unfavourably in the past. He'll probably keep doing it, if more such cases pop up. He isn't on Hulk Hogan's side. He's on his side, and he won. Making this about the particulars of Hogan's case is deliberately eliding the fact that Thiel didn't give a shit about Hogan's case other than that it could bankrupt Gawker.
- ElComradio 10y ago
  If in fact there are other viable cases, in the absence of Thiel the injustice would then be that Gawker can behave badly indefinitely because most of the victims will not pay the necessary amount to litigate.

bogomipz 10y ago

Trade "rich person" for "powerful media outlet" and Gawker is the bully. And it's been cheap for Gawker over the years with their 40 million in revenue to throw any hapless victims to the wolves if they thought that it would sell advertising. And guess what it was cheap for them. How many people didn't have the money or resources to take Gawker on?

andkon 10y ago
The question was about whether or not it was ethical for Thiel to do what he did. Saying that Gawker did something bad to other people does not mean Thiel has an obligation to do anything, nor does it say that he acted ethically to do what he did.

imgabe 10y ago

If Gawker hadn't published anything litigable, they wouldn't have had any problems. If there is a litigable claim, there should be at least the possibility that the person who is being litigated against has done something wrong. Who cares about the motives of the person exposing the wrongdoing as long as it's accurate?

andkon 10y ago
There are a few ways this argument can play out: 1. You have a moral obligation to litigate moral wrongs, whether or not they happened to you. Since rich people have more money and hence more things are litigable to them, they have a moral obligation to litigate more things. In this view, Thiel obviously did the wrong thing: he avoided litigating moral wrongs for years while waiting for the right case to come up strictly about Gawker. He failed to act ethically, under this model. 2. It is morally permissible to litigate moral or even legal wrongs that were not committed to you. It being permissible means it's a supererogatory feature of your moral life, in that you don't have to do it. It goes beyond the call of duty to sue Gawker for what they did to Hogan. But without a moral obligation to do so, you can't say that it could ever override your other obligations to behave ethically. Retribution, which this clearly was, is not an obviously ethical motive that would mean we should wholesale excuse what Thiel did—even though it may have been a good act to punish Gawker for Hogan, it was morally wrong to use the legal system strictly for retribution. 3. It is your moral obligation to litigate all litigable acts. This is absurd, prima facie: all our money and time should go towards litigation? Nah. In other words, yeah, the motives matter. Thiel went above and beyond the call of duty and acted unethically, in an especially egregious and self-serving way available only to billionaires, along the way.
- imgabe 10y ago
  Another way to look at it is this: It happened. For the most part, everyone is better off because it did. If that weren't the case, we would have done something to stop it. "Moral obligations" are made-up. Obligated by whom? What happens if someone doesn't fulfill their moral obligation? Nothing, right? Maybe someone writes a comment on the Internet saying they should be ashamed, but that's pretty much it. Feel free to pontificate all you like about the morality of it. That won't change the fact that it did happen and will happen again unless a force powerful enough to stop it chooses to do so. Ultimately, the whole point of having a justice system is to sort out these questions. Anybody can sue anyone else for any reason. We depend on the courts to sort out the ones that are valid from the ones that are invalid. In this case, the courts deemed this a valid lawsuit. If you disagree with the validity of it or feel the methods by which the courts make these judgments is flawed, then that's one thing, but the rules of the system allow any lawsuit to be brought for any reason.