
Wanted: Better Defenses of Peter Thiel - aaronbrethorst
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/wanted-better-defenses-of-peter-thiel
======
mark_l_watson
I don't a dog in this fight, but my opinion is that it is OK to privately pay
legal expenses for someone else.

Was it legal? Apparently yes. So, what is the problem?

Edit: to be fair, I am a little biased because Thiel's book 'Zero to One' was
very useful, and I have never got value from Gawker.

------
internaut
These are the options according to the author.

Option 1.

Thiel clandestinely funds lawsuits. This makes him a Bad Man, distributing
cats paws and using them to pervert the public interest.

Option 2.

Thiel openly funds lawsuits. This enables him to:

2.1. Give a heads up to his adversaries. Sporting chance perhaps.

2.2. Be vilified as contributing to chilling effects by spreading fear of
being sued in the media establishment. Needless to say the Bad Man is
perverting the public interest.

Huh. His logic just eats itself. He also says a number of things about the law
I suspect cannot be true since he has to fall back on claiming Thiel is
defying the laws of countries that don't exist today and which in any case
would not apply to the United States if they did. I don't have the time to
critique his other claims, I really don't.

------
jessriedel
The author is not nearly insightful enough to justify his inflammatory tone.

~~~
p4wnc6
Can you substantiate this?

~~~
internaut
Not worried about any trash talk like labeling people cowards (from my
perspective it's like calling you into the light to get a better shot with a
different barrel) but the author doesn't want to consider that the public and
private interests can be aligned. He has a point about Foucault. The rest
isn't well argued, he is hand waving frantically so you don't consider the
facts he's leaving out.

~~~
p4wnc6
This still just seems unsubstantiated. Can you point to what is hand waving or
what important things are left out?

~~~
internaut
Am tired. Also tipsy. So bear that in mind.

>Indeed, what Thiel is doing used to be illegal.

It isn't legally relevant that Anglo-Norman laws would find Thiel guilty of
something. They're from a different time and place to us. That's hand waving
if we're talking legality.

Now let's talk of selectively leaving facts out.

Supposing there exist laws for chamberty and barratry in our society. Ok. Now
has Thiel violated them?

Chamberty isn't worth discussing because not even Gawker believes he did it
for money.

Barratry is defined in the article as vexatious litigation or incitement to
it. What's left out is that Thiel did not incite litigation by searching for a
person who could hypothetically sue Gawker and then proceed to financially
motivate them. He found somebody definitely wanted to sue (I might be correct
to say that he was already in the process of this) Gawker and supported that
effort financially.

It is vexatious litigation? No. This is when a frivolous lawsuit or meritless
motions are repeatedly launched. This is left out. Hogan/Terry's lawsuit had
merit and the judge evidently must have found it be be a straight forward
black and white case of wrongdoing judging from the fact she awarded more
compensation than requested (I think). Again, relevant information left out.

If there existed a variety of bullshit lawsuits against Gawker, they would
definitely be making us aware of that and pointing to Peter Thiel as the
originator. Since they are not we can be reasonably sure they do not exist.

~~~
p4wnc6
You unjustifiably dismiss champerty. Champerty is not merely participating in
the financial outcome of another's legal result, rather it is participating in
"the subject matter of the action." In this case, it's reasonable to argue
Thiel is maintaining the suit in order to participate in the status or
personal satisfaction of ensuring Gawker must pay a ruinous amount of money.
In fact, that is _the_ primary issue: that he is doing it because he
personally doesn't like Gawker and derives personal pleasure from
participating in Gawker's ruin. Champerty is, unarguably, highly relevant.

I agree that it's not vexatious litigation. Most probably the litigation
already existed and was deemed reasonable as it proceeded to be heard.

Regarding your final paragraph, there actually is some question as to how many
suits Thiel has helped support. If evidence were found that the common link
was Gawker, that would heighten suspicion. Whether any of them were "bullshit"
would be open for the asking. And even if they were permissible suits by the
letter of the law, Thiel's actions could still be worthy of significant
criticism and warning in regards to effects on press freedom.

A lot of the defenses I see for Thiel go along the lines of "but what he's
doing is legal by the letter of the law." I find this silly, because most of
the criticism in this situation is focused on saying that it's _morally wrong_
and violates the spirit of the law, and might be a good prompt to ask
questions about legal reform.

~~~
internaut
> A lot of the defenses I see for Thiel go along the lines of "but what he's
> doing is legal by the letter of the law." I find this silly, because most of
> the criticism in this situation is focused on saying that it's morally wrong
> and violates the spirit of the law.

Frankly this is the argument you should have started with because Champerty is
a throwback to a time trial by torture was probably also a legal principal. It
is a distraction.

Obviously morality and legality are not the same thing, but the people arguing
that he did not break the law usually think that he also did the right thing
morally.

It is just that arguing over morality is much more convoluted then talking of
legality. Legality is our most black/white argument so it's the one we tend to
use in an argument. Makes sense, right?

Morality is unlike the law in that the law strives for one interpretation.
There exists a left wing morality and a right wing morality that have
considerable overlap but which are two different sets. The funny thing to
Thiel supporters is that the Left are contorting themselves into pretzels
because the Robin Hood principal of taking from the rich and giving to the
poor looks pretty funny here. That's why 75%+ of HN and arstechnica is on our
side. Gawker went too far by egalitarian eyes as well.

The truth is that this is a media war. It is about the establishment, the
media, getting their yuckiest, loudest member taken out. The media feels
discomfiture because Gawker represented the edge of how far you could go, and
now that they are gone they have to redraw the boundaries of what is
permissible so they don't meet a similar fate.

Since we do not live in Stalinist Russia, this is fine.

Otherwise the media is unimpeachable, always free from guilt and wrongdoing.
That seems unlikely to everyone.

So. Media people of the world. Climb down off the high horses. Take your
lashings. You richly deserve them. Then quit whining and get back to doing
decent journalism. Or you know. Maybe get a new job if you cannot do that.

Taking about Champerty makes you look like sore losers and you know it.

~~~
p4wnc6
> Taking about Champerty makes you look like sore losers and you know it.

This is weirdly personal, since I am not a member of the media and have no
vested interest in the outcome. I'm interested in the moral implications, more
for philosophical curiosity's sake, but it is very telling to me that you
resort to this sort of statement and continue to say a lot of unsubstantiated
things as excuses to dismiss champerty without actually dealing with it.

> now that they are gone they have to redraw the boundaries of what is
> permissible so they don't meet a similar fate.

That's a good way of putting it -- Thiel is attempting a certain kind of moral
gerrymandering, which many people find to be quite obviously more frightening
than the boundary transgressions he's using as his personal gerrymandering
excuse.

There will always be boundaries between these different sectors. I completely
agree that Gawker straddled that boundary. The worrying thing is that a single
wealthy person gets to redraw the boundary to suit his personal whims, with
essentially no input from society at large (who, seemingly, derive lots of
value from the service Gawker provides, evidenced by their willingness to pay
Gawker with attention and dollars).

Libertarian bros like Thiel (and you see this constantly in the HN echo
chamber) love to come out in support of blurring legal boundaries, e.g. Uber
being required to treat drivers as employees, because it is supposedly how
society innovates away from stagnant laws that "should" be ignored by powerful
companies to deliver value that customers indicate they want via paying
dollars. Easier to ask for forgiveness for breaking or bending the law than to
let your innovation be stifled while you ask for permission.

Yet when it's inconvenient for them, such as in this situation with Gawker,
they don't seem to care if people generally find it valuable (imputed from
Gawker's success) and conveniently they suddenly _do_ care about the specific
letter of the law (something that, contrary to your blowhard comments above,
is _not_ of general interest when debating these things -- unless happening to
focus on the letter of the law is convenient for the tech culture tribe in
some given debate). Unsurprisingly hypocritical just like everyone else.

~~~
internaut
> This is weirdly personal, since I am not a member of the media and have no
> vested interest in the outcome. I'm interested in the moral implications,
> more for philosophical curiosity's sake, but it is very telling to me that
> you resort to this sort of statement and continue to say a lot of
> unsubstantiated things as excuses to dismiss champerty without actually
> dealing with it.

I apologize for implying you were one. It is just that after the TPM person
used the word Champerty suddenly news outlets online started to use the word
in a similar fashion within hours of each other (Qz, Vox). I have to wonder if
that is coordinated in some way (like a party line) so I had the impression
the media is piling on what I consider to be a poor line of argument. Indeed
if you do a search of Thiel and Champerty you have a host of somewhat dodgy
(urls I've never seen before) news websites pushing Champerty-Thiel stories.

dailyreadlist.com onenewspage.com newsreality.com onlinegetnews.com
webnewspost.com nationwidenewsbulletin.com veryinternationalpeople.com
us.otpisal.com worldwidenewshub.com contacto-latino.com everydayreportage.com
newsjs.com grabpage.info regator.com

Never heard of them.

Some of them are probably real... but I have to wonder about astroturfing.

I realize that news syndication exists but Champerty is an unusual old word
and I would wonder if some unscrupulous media organization (naming no names)
decided to make a great deal of noise using it so that a typical person using
a search engine would be left with a distinct impression of illegality on
Thiel's part, which is of course not actually true as we discussed.

My impression of the media remains the same but my irritation is not at you
personally since you are at least providing a rational line of argument, you
just got tagged along with all the champerty word using people as I flicked
through my tabs.

> That's a good way of putting it -- Thiel is attempting a certain kind of
> moral gerrymandering, which many people find to be quite obviously more
> frightening than the boundary transgressions he's using as his personal
> gerrymandering excuse. > > There will always be boundaries between these
> different sectors. I completely agree that Gawker straddled that boundary.
> The worrying thing is that a single wealthy person gets to redraw the
> boundary to suit his personal whims, with essentially no input from society
> at large (who, seemingly, derive lots of value from the service Gawker
> provides, evidenced by their willingness to pay Gawker with attention and
> dollars).

Now we're getting to the heart of the thing. Gawker used its employees hunting
down salacious gossip and its treasure trove to then ward off attacks by
lawyers in order to stretch moral boundaries.

It then broke those boundaries by engaging in illegality and immoral behavior
repeatedly. It stole private information from people. It stole stories from
other journalists. Nick Denton hid profits from Gawker overseas to avoid tax.
It was used by politicians and activists to launch hit jobs or character
assassinations.

That is why Gawker should be put back into its box. But nobody could put the
lid on the box because an organization with a talent for destroying
reputations is scary to people with influence and some politcos and media
people like having Gawker around to run their dirty work for them.

Then...! Peter Thiel and Hulk Hogan. I'm sure you remember the ending of The
Dark Knight. Why it was just like that. :-)

"And we'll hunt him. But he can take it. Because he's not our hero. He's a
silent guardian, a watchful protector. A dark knight."

Mind The Dark Knight was a thoroughly conservative perspective.

> Libertarian bros like Thiel (and you see this constantly in the HN echo
> chamber) love to come out in support of blurring legal boundaries, e.g. Uber
> being required to treat drivers as employees, because it is supposedly how
> society innovates away from stagnant laws that "should" be ignored by
> powerful companies to deliver value that customers indicate they want via
> paying dollars. Easier to ask for forgiveness for breaking or bending the
> law than to let your innovation be stifled while you ask for permission.

It's not being inconsistent. Most geeks are chaotic evil/neutral/good not
lawful evil/neutral/good. Some companies break the law and do good. Some stay
within the law and do bad. I think I made a distinction between morality and
legality already above. Thiel incidentally is very much anti-Uber since he
owns shares in its competition and calls Uber the most ethically challenged
company in SV. You really can't knock libertarians on this basis, there's a
wide spectrum of opposing thought on this issue within our ranks.

> Yet when it's inconvenient for them, such as in this situation with Gawker,
> they don't seem to care if people generally find it valuable (imputed from
> Gawker's success) and conveniently they suddenly do care about the specific
> letter of the law (something that, contrary to your blowhard comments above,
> is not of general interest when debating these things -- unless happening to
> focus on the letter of the law is convenient for the tech culture tribe in
> some given debate). Unsurprisingly hypocritical just like everyone else.

And now we're back to name calling. What was your argument again? That people
who argue that he didn't do anything wrong legally are amoral hypocrites? I'm
sure they'd argue back that they're stating the facts which they'd consider to
be a stronger line than tenuously invoking non-existent laws.

We do have a moral code. But as I already said, moral codes are different for
different people. Sometimes they overlap and sometimes they don't. I think
we've reached an impasse so now I leave the argument.

