Red Mosquito

tragabigzanda wrote:Where do y'all stand on the Gawker vs. Peter Thiel story? I'm team Thiel; I hope he brings Gawker to the ground.

Denton is a shining example of everything that is wrong with Western culture. A man who profits from dehumanizing others. But, what Thiel (who is a pledged Trump delegate BTW) did gives me pause. I am undecided at this point and open to hearing others thoughts on this.

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tragabigzanda wrote:Where do y'all stand on the Gawker vs. Peter Thiel story? I'm team Thiel; I hope he brings Gawker to the ground.

I know I'm real late on this, but I'm Team Gawker with extreme prejudice. There's going to be a huge loophole cut into freedom of expression if Hulk Hogan ultimately wins his case, and even if he does, Thiel bankrolling lawsuits just to settle an unrelated personal vendetta is a dangerous perversion of justice.

Green Habit wrote:

tragabigzanda wrote:Where do y'all stand on the Gawker vs. Peter Thiel story? I'm team Thiel; I hope he brings Gawker to the ground.

I know I'm real late on this, but I'm Team Gawker with extreme prejudice. There's going to be a huge loophole cut into freedom of expression if Hulk Hogan ultimately wins his case, and even if he does, Thiel bankrolling lawsuits just to settle an unrelated personal vendetta is a dangerous perversion of justice.

I see what you're saying, but Gawker didn't have to break the law - this is sounding like the victim-blaming rape argument...

And lets not pretend there aren't (more than) 2 sets of laws in this country for the rich and poor. And the police, they get their own too.

I really can't fathom how publishing someone's private sex tape without their consent falls under "freedom of speech."

Fuck You Jobu wrote:I see what you're saying, but Gawker didn't have to break the law - this is sounding like the victim-blaming rape argument...

Let me make clear that Gawker is very much wrong in publishing Hogan's tape, something it never should have done. The societal standard should be for Hogan or anyone else to be able to make a sex tape with the expectation of its viewing being limited to whomever the participants say should get to view it.

My issue is whether Gawker has the right to do something they shouldn't have done.

tragabigzanda wrote:Yea, but what you're calling "freedom of expression" is uncomfortably close to what many call "news," and it is most certainly gossip...

Huh? News and even gossip are a bedrock part of freedom of expression. I don't get what you mean by calling that "uncomfortably close".

tragabigzanda wrote:My problem with Gawker isn't that they're a gossip site masquerading as a news outlet; I don't care too much about that. But they are bullies, in the same way Rupert Murdoch has been a bully. Reporting -- news, gossip, or other -- should never be used to coerce others into an unfair position, and Gawker has done that on multiple occasions.

My understanding is that Gawker and its sister sites have never cared to coerce who they've got dirt on. They offer money to people who get something salacious, and then they run it without the input of who's implicated. That's the business of running a tabloid.

tragabigzanda wrote:Fuck 'em. Free speech, freedom of expression, etc will continue to thrive long after they've been purchased and liquidated by Buzz Feed.

Oh, there will be plenty of future Gawkers if they do bite the dust, I have little doubt about that. Also, there are some signs that Gawker is (very slowly) changing their ways. They pulled an article outing someone as gay recently, and Deadspin also refused to publish the Laremy Tunsil gas mask tape.

LoathedVermin72 wrote:I really can't fathom how publishing someone's private sex tape without their consent falls under "freedom of speech."

Should third parties have been barred from publishing Anthony Weiner's dick pics if they got a hold of them?

If you're using information to harass or blackmail someone, then I agree that it can be legally actionable. And that shouldn't apply just to sex tapes, which is why I have a problem with how some of the "revenge porn" laws are crafted. But if your only legal trigger is "publishing without consent", that's going to ensnare a lot of First Amendment protected expression.

Green Habit wrote:My issue is whether Gawker has the right to do something they shouldn't have done.

The right to do what exactly? Are you asking if Gawker has the right to do something illegal?

Fuck You Jobu wrote:

Green Habit wrote:My issue is whether Gawker has the right to do something they shouldn't have done.

The right to do what exactly? Are you asking if Gawker has the right to do something illegal?

What I'm saying is that the law they may have run afoul of may be unconstitutional.

tragabigzanda wrote:

Green Habit wrote:

tragabigzanda wrote:Yea, but what you're calling "freedom of expression" is uncomfortably close to what many call "news," and it is most certainly gossip...

Huh? News and even gossip are a bedrock part of freedom of expression. I don't get what you mean by calling that "uncomfortably close".

I just meant that it seems like some are trying to make the argument that Gawker is a news site, therefore they should be able to post whatever they want under the protection of the 1st amendment; and that lots of gossip and clickbait sites are purporting to be news outlets. Shit, Fox News and The New York Times both wear their political leanings firmly on their sleeves. So I just wanted to clarify that Gawker is not a news site, and that spin-free reporting done solely for the purpose of educating the public is almost non-existent these days.

I'd say that gossip sites are a type of (particularly sleazy) news, but even if you want to make a distinction, publishing truthful gossip is still protected.

tragabigzanda wrote:

Green Habit wrote:

tragabigzanda wrote:My problem with Gawker isn't that they're a gossip site masquerading as a news outlet; I don't care too much about that. But they are bullies, in the same way Rupert Murdoch has been a bully. Reporting -- news, gossip, or other -- should never be used to coerce others into an unfair position, and Gawker has done that on multiple occasions.

My understanding is that Gawker and its sister sites have never cared to coerce who they've got dirt on. They offer money to people who get something salacious, and then they run it without the input of who's implicated. That's the business of running a tabloid.

We agree on that last part. And maybe I shouldn't have used the word "coerce," it probably wasn't the best choice. My concern here is that the old-school tabloids, like The National Enquirer, were easy to suss out because they were printed on shitty equipment, and were available weekly at your checkout aisle; as a publication, it was very easy to ignore, and I'd wager that a hurtful bit of gossip didn't carry quite the same weight. But when a site like Gawker outs a homosexual citizen, it's immediately picked up and reported by other outlets, and can have disastrous impacts for the citizen in question. It's reckless and gratuitous behavior on Gawker's part, more so than tabloids of yore because of the extent of its reach.

I think you're underestimating the reach of traditional tabloids back in the day, they were long the thorn in the back of celebrities who didn't know how to use them to their advantage. I suppose I could cede that some people didn't recognize Gawker as the online version of the New York Daily News--leaning left politically, but in the end still a sleazy tabloid. But given recent events it's tougher to have that confusion now.

tragabigzanda wrote:

Green Habit wrote:

tragabigzanda wrote:Fuck 'em. Free speech, freedom of expression, etc will continue to thrive long after they've been purchased and liquidated by Buzz Feed.

Oh, there will be plenty of future Gawkers if they do bite the dust, I have little doubt about that. Also, there are some signs that Gawker is (very slowly) changing their ways. They pulled an article outing someone as gay recently, and Deadspin also refused to publish the Laremy Tunsil gas mask tape.

Good. I hope other follow suit. I hope Gawker is shuttered, and sites of their ilk will better differentiate between more benign gossip (like who Rihanna's dating) and more damaging gossip.

Right, doing something like outing a person's sexuality against their will is evil to the core, no matter how legal it may be.

tragabigzanda wrote:

Green Habit wrote:

LoathedVermin72 wrote:I really can't fathom how publishing someone's private sex tape without their consent falls under "freedom of speech."

Should third parties have been barred from publishing Anthony Weiner's dick pics if they got a hold of them?

Yes, I think so.

I disagree. Such a situation could have easily turned into a he said, she said mess, but having photographic evidence sealed the story. Bringing this back to the case at hand, I believe Hogan also included defamation in his lawsuit, but that went nowhere quickly because the video proved without a shadow of a doubt that Gawker was telling the truth.

tragabigzanda wrote:I don't give a fuck what any politician does privately, so long as it doesn't bring about harm to the populous for whom the politician works. This gets a little fuzzy depending on who the politician is -- if they are someone who has campaigned on a platform on righteousness, and then it's found they are not themselves righteous, then ok, maybe that should be reported on. But publishing salacious details on an elected official that don't seem to have any obvious bearing on his/her official role? That's part-and-parcel with the Hogan tape, as far as I'm concerned.

I don't think the government should be in the business of deciding what has an "obvious bearing" on the interest of the public, and the First Amendment assures that it doesn't.

I think the manner by which they obtained the material is the key. Whoever first distributed it without consent seems to have obviously broken the law. Wasn't Gawker involved in that in some shady way? I'm fuzzy on the details.

LoathedVermin72 wrote:I think the manner by which they obtained the material is the key. Whoever first distributed it without consent seems to have obviously broken the law. Wasn't Gawker involved in that in some shady way? I'm fuzzy on the details.

http://gawker.com/5948770/even-for-a-mi ... -it-anyway

Gawker wrote:Last week, a burned DVD copy of Hulk having sex with the woman rumored to be Heather Clem (Bubba's ex-wife), was delivered to us through an anonymous source. They wanted no payment. They wanted no credit. Their only request was that we watch it.

If this account is correct, then what they did should legally be in the clear. (Again, these are all morally reprehensible actions.)

Oh, and it's ironic that while searching for the post, this ended up being at the top of Gawker's website:

New Startup That Sends Dossiers On Your Private Social Media Profiles To Potential Landlords Should Be Illegal

Green Habit wrote:Oh, and it's ironic that while searching for the post, this ended up being at the top of Gawker's website:

New Startup That Sends Dossiers On Your Private Social Media Profiles To Potential Landlords Should Be Illegal

Holy fuck that's terrifying

This topic is #2,371 on my list of concerns.

Green Habit wrote:

tragabigzanda wrote:Where do y'all stand on the Gawker vs. Peter Thiel story? I'm team Thiel; I hope he brings Gawker to the ground.

I know I'm real late on this, but I'm Team Gawker with extreme prejudice. There's going to be a huge loophole cut into freedom of expression if Hulk Hogan ultimately wins his case, and even if he does, Thiel bankrolling lawsuits just to settle an unrelated personal vendetta is a dangerous perversion of justice.

This is ultimately my concern... that this precedent could not only encourage other members of the 0.01% to punish those they don't through case shopping, but it could also lead to devastating effects on free speech online. I believe there already have been lawsuits about online "hate speech" effecting the snowflake crowd and how institutions (schools and uni's in particular) are somewhat responsible for this. The UK might even arrest people for this behavior IIRC. It would not be out of the question for a anti-US, anti-capitalist Soros-type to start bankrolling these cases to try and force their own political views on society, which is essentially what Thiel has done (and the NRA has done successfully for decades).