> only people without money should be able to sue?
Is this what I said? No. But outspending a publication by an order of magnitude so that they either go bankrupt fighting you or lose the case is an example of how you can abuse the court system if you have way more money than your opponent. Its the same tactics large corporations use to sue small corporations in order to force them to settle regardless of whether they are right or wrong.
>> There are ways to get the tape removed without simply outspending the press to the point where they cannot feasibly fight your lawsuit.
> So this is Thiels fault, not Gawker? Gawker got away with a lot of shit before it was finally called on it.
Well yes, I see it as Thiel's fault because he wasn't a party to the case in any way but decided to give Hogan a blank check to send a huge team of lawyers after Gawker. Even if that was perhaps fair game, they didn't have to sue for so much that they literally shut down the entire organization.
>> cases like this ensure that journalists will have to self-censor what they publish
> Yes, is that difficult?
Yes it is. Its not black and white so there will necessarily be cases in the gray area (cases that could be very important and in the public interest) where publications will say "we can't publish this because we only have $10 million and someone with $10 billion could sue us and we will lose simply based on lawyer fees." For example, see the woman who was sexually harassed by Trump but backed down from talking about it publicly after Trump said he was sending an army of lawyers after her. How can someone who might make say $50,000 defend herself against a multi-billionaire? So we get censorship for no reason other than fear of billionaires suing.
> I disagree, the degrees of freedom Gawker had were far too much, it didn't even try to be fair. What actual good did Gawker do?
I already answered this above but here is one series of examples: https://www.wired.com/2016/06/10-stories-exactly-need-gawker...
I don't agree with Wired that all of those were super important but some of them clearly are. For example, Buzzfeed removing articles that were critical of their advertisers, the first exposes of the Silk Road and The Armory, evidence of Greg Hardy abusing his girlfriend, etc.