Nick Denton is such a whiny twat: http://gawker.com/an-open-letter-to-peter-thiel-1778991227
he's full of shit. He's done a bunch of vindictive shit that he even alludes to in that article and now that he got destroyed at his own game he's trying to play a "we're just a small media company" victim role.
one million dollars
No he's just saying "what's the end goal?" If they get sued into oblivion it's not like another company isn't going to fill the void.
Thiel’s conduct would likely have been a tort at common law a century ago. Today, it is well within the parameters of third-party involvement in lawsuits. The common law had numerous restrictions on people sponsoring or recruiting others for litigation. The “support of litigation by a stranger” to the case constitutes the common law crime and tort of maintenance; a related prohibition on “champerty” also prohibited similar conduct.
However, these common law doctrines have long since fallen into desuetude. They were gradually eroded by numerous developments, most saliently public interest litigation and the private provision of legal aid to indigents. Public interest and civil rights groups routinely look for plaintiffs and engineer “test cases” to develop legal principles. One of the final blows for the doctrine was the Supreme Court’s decision in NAACP v. Button, 371 U.S. 415 (1963), holding Virginia’s champerty and maintenance laws violated the First Amendment, because litigation – and the sponsorship of it – is a vehicle for expressing viewpoints.
Anyone who donates to the ACLU or a Legal Aid fund is basically underwriting third-party litigation. Most recently, private profit-motivated litigation finance has emerged as an industry in its own right, unburdened by any concern over the old common law rules.
The disappearance of champerty and maintenance (and the related barratry) doctrines has not been entirely a good thing in my view, but in practice no one is calling for their revival. By current standards, Thiel’s funding should raise no eyebrows — unless one also wants to revisit public interest litigation, class actions and contingent fees.
Critics of Thiel’s role in the Gawker case argue that it is particularly inappropriate because they think he is motivated by “revenge” over the gossip site’s earlier publication of stories about his private life. But if the lawsuit is not frivolous, it is hard to see how the motivations of funders are relevant (or discernible). One would not say a civil rights organization could not accept donations from philanthropists angered by a personal experience with discrimination. All Thiel has done is cut out the middleman.
That's not obvious. Less companies are willing to fill the void if that void comes with potentially massive litigation costs.
Thiel's engaging in interest litigation. That's not unusual in any way.
This type of media/journalism has been around for a long time and I doubt Thiel is going to singlehandedly cleanse the market of it.
Whiney or not, I pretty much agree with him
http://arstechnica.com/business/2016/06/gawker-to-declare-bankruptcy-auction-itself-off-in-wake-of-hulk-hogan-lawsuit/Gawker Media is set to formally declare bankruptcy, and owner Nick Denton plans to put the company up for auction, according to numerous media outlets.
"[Gawker Media] is also now formally entertaining offers to buy the company and says it has a firm bid from publisher Ziff Davis to buy the entire operation for less than $100 million," Recode reported.
As Ars reported earlier, Gawker has already begun the process of appealing the $140 million verdict a jury ordered it to pay in March 2016 for publishing a sex tape of Terry Bollea, better known as former pro-wrestler Hulk Hogan.
A filing of Chapter 11 bankruptcy would have the immediate effect of shielding the company from its creditors, including Hogan and his attorneys.
Last year, some of the company's financial details were disclosed as it sought outside investment before the then-upcoming trial. The company generated a profit of $6.5 million on $44.3 million in revenue in 2014. Last year, it saw $48.7 million in revenue, according to information made public at trial.
Univision bought Gawker Media at auction this week, but they have decided to shut down Gawker.com
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article130659399.htmlA Russian-tied tech firm named in a controversial dossier containing uncorroborated allegations about President Donald Trump and the hacking of Democratic National Committee email accounts announced late Friday that it has filed defamation suits against the online news site BuzzFeed, its editor in chief and a former British intelligence agent.
The lawsuits were brought by XBT Holdings, a Cyprus-based company owned by Russian tech magnate Aleksej Gubarev. Lawyers for his firm filed complaints Friday in London against the former spy and his company, and against BuzzFeed and its editor in chief, Ben Smith, in Broward County Circuit Court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where XBT’s subsidiary Webzilla is headquartered.