> The question should be why you need a billionaire to fund a lawsuit to get some sort of justice. Exactly. You shouldn't need $10M to sue someone for a grave

> The question should be why you need a billionaire to fund a lawsuit to get some sort of justice. Exactly. You shouldn't need $10M to sue someone for a grave invasion of privacy. It's also true that groups such as the EFF are funded in large part by corporations and billionaire foundations (although not exclusively). However, there is a crucial distinction between the EFF and what Thiel did. The EFF is an issue-driven organization. They issue position statements and operate in public. Their lawsuits are specific to the issues they advocate. The public has the ability to debate these issues and ultimately evolve the law around them. They have that balance of power. Thiel's objective was simply to run Gawker out of business. He pursued a variety of lawsuits on a diversity of claims that were united only in their goal of censoring a publication. That is not principled philanthropy. Operating in secret and without a principled issue focus, he does not face a balance of power from the public. If Thiel funded a privacy-advocacy foundation that gave legal aid to victims and engaged in principled public debate, that would be one thing. But that's not what he did here.