I don't follow the logic here. Gawker was brought down via the Hogan case, which was financed by Thiel.
Do you believe the Hogan case was an illegitimate suit? If not, why does it matter who financed it? I find the fact that it requires huge funds to win a case much more troubling, personally. If the suit itself is legitimate, then him winning is a good thing.
If you take exception to Thiel financing Hogan's case, why? Hogan very likely would not have been able to afford the case without the financing, meaning justice wouldn't have been served because he was not rich enough.
It goes both ways. If Thiel's money was necessary for Hogan to get justice, that is indeed a problem with the US legal system.
But, on the flipside, Thiel was financing numerous lawsuits against Gawker due to a personal vendetta, many of them much more frivolous and defensible than the Hogan case. He clearly intended to bury Gawker, the Hogan thing was just a way he found to do it quickly rather than waiting for their legal defense funds to run out.
Both of these are problems. What's troubling/chilling is that Thiel hasn't stopped, he's just agreed to finance other peoples' vendettas (in the first case, Shiva Ayyadurai, about whom Techdirt are telling the absolute verifiable truth when they say he's lying about inventing email). That's where it crossed the line, and created a dangerous precedent that has a real chilling effect.
Do you believe the Hogan case was an illegitimate suit? If not, why does it matter who financed it? I find the fact that it requires huge funds to win a case much more troubling, personally. If the suit itself is legitimate, then him winning is a good thing.
If you take exception to Thiel financing Hogan's case, why? Hogan very likely would not have been able to afford the case without the financing, meaning justice wouldn't have been served because he was not rich enough.