Jury Orders Gawker To Pay $115 Million To Hulk Hogan In Sex Tape Lawsuit (zerohedge.com) 236
An anonymous reader writes: [Hogan's attorneys told jurors this is the core of the case:] "Gawker took a secretly recorded sex tape and put it on the Internet." And now they are paying for it, dearly. Also notable is that there doesn't seem to be anyone interested in defending them, as even the Twitter community (if it can truly be called that) has come out strongly in favor of the ruling against Gawker. Maybe they should have at least made more friends? They did make $6.5 million in net income in 2014 and their Wikipedia article states that they were last sold in 2009 for $300 million, so while they may not be put out of business, it seems likely they will at least be [changing] hands, and soon, with the jury ruling $55 million for economic injuries and $60 million for emotional distress. I think that's jury-speak for "body slam."
According to Ars Technica, Gawker Media was one of the first successful, large, digital-only news companies. "The stunning sum, which may have punitive damages added to it, is a life-threatening event for the New York-based network of news and gossip sites."
According to Ars Technica, Gawker Media was one of the first successful, large, digital-only news companies. "The stunning sum, which may have punitive damages added to it, is a life-threatening event for the New York-based network of news and gossip sites."
Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's time gawker got kicked in the balls for their shitty reporting practices. My only regret is that the hulkster is not allowed to use the piile-driver on the CEO in the court room following the verdict.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Informative)
Hogan's signature move is the leg drop, not the pile drive.
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That's true, but it's such a boring move. This is a special case, he should kick it up another notch.
Re:Good. (Score:4, Insightful)
Given his age I'd already be surprised if he could do the leg drop anymore, let alone kick it up a notch.
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Given his age I'd already be surprised if he could do the leg drop anymore, let alone kick it up a notch.
Not so old as to keep him from pile driving his friend's wife...
Fair that money was awarded, amount excessive (Score:3, Insightful)
It feels very strange to me that someone could be set for life, catapaulted to wealth far beyond what most individuals might accrue, based on a legal judgement like this.
Re:Fair that money was awarded, amount excessive (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't disagree that the amount seems excessive. However, you can't compare him to a regular person. The personal damage could be comparable to a regular person--and the damages should be comparable. However, a large part of the damages here are for professional damages. I'd be surprised if the professional damages were that high too, but I guess the jury did not. It appears he was fired from the WWE over this.
The number will escalate too, as they haven't added on punitive damages, and he's also getting money from the CEO and editor at the time.
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I'd be surprised if the professional damages were that high too, but I guess the jury did not. It appears he was fired from the WWE over this.
He was actually fired for the racist rant that appeared in the video, over his daughter's relationship with a black fellow, rather than for the sex scene itself...
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Both of them can FOAD.
An acronym that includes a bad word.
My favorite is the "N" word [youtube.com]
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A lot of it is punitive. Has to be otherwise fines won't have much affect on large corporations when the victim is an ordinary person who only lost maybe a few hundred k max.
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So the damage is the result of him marketing himself as a sexual powerhouse and the reality of being exposed as a 'er' little finger and thus he is no longer able to lie and make money by putting down other men as little fingers http://www.stuff.co.nz/oddstuf... [stuff.co.nz], so is this court rage by a similarly afflicted judge and jury. So should you really be able to claim damages for no longer be able to tell lies and profit by doing so whilst damaging the psychology of 'er' little finger afflicted males. So who sho
Re:Fair that money was awarded, amount excessive (Score:5, Interesting)
This isn't just compensating the victim, this is also about punishment. The only way to punish a corporation is in its balance sheet.
All too often, we see fines levied against huge corps that are pretty much chump change to them. If you make millions or billions from misconduct, a few million dollars in fines is nothing - it's the cost of doing business.
So, good for the Hogan! If it drives Gawker out of business, well fuck'em! I just hope that if the editorial staff tries to start another company like this, the investors do due diligence and realize the type of people they're dealing with.
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Re:Fair that money was awarded, amount excessive (Score:4, Informative)
I believe this is the tape that contained Hogan making racial slurs, which caused him to be kicked out of the WWE, lose his toy line, and most of his other various promotions, etc. His source of income is gone.
He's 62 now, so if he lives another 15 years, that's basically just 8 million dollars a year that he's charging. And his estate has also lost out from sales that would have happened after his death. And don't forget punitive damages.
$115 million seems fair considering that it was a humiliating invasion of privacy that left his career and estate in ruins and his personal reputation extremely damaged. (For comparison, Erin Andrews got $55 million for being spied on and recorded, which was unquestionably a highly traumatic experience invoked on her by a despicable person, but ultimately it may have helped her career if anything.)
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Their mistake was not just publishing the racial slurs and nothing else. If they had simply exposed him as a racist it would have been all public interest and absolutely fine. Instead they had to go with the sex tape angle, and in the end it screwed them (pun intended).
Re: Fair that money was awarded, amount excessive (Score:2)
For comparison, Erin Andrews got $55 million for being spied on and recorded
Andrews was awarded $55 for negligence that allowed someone else to record her and distribute the recording.. Marriott didn't solicit a recording of Andrews nor did they obtain and distribute the recording.
Gawker isn't being punished for negligence. They're being punished for deliberately soliciting and distributing a sex tape without the consent of either party in the sex act.
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You don't see a problem?
A Slashdot user, where every user thinks handing so much as a piece of anonymised location data to a 3rd party is an invasion of privacy thinks that it's okay for someone's private comments made in a private place with expectation of privacy to be published and cost someone their career?
Quite frankly he could be a KKK member in his spare time, but that doesn't give anyone the right to destroy his life publicly for something (legal) they do privately.
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Doesn't matter whether or not you like it. You did it, you said it, you meant it, then you own it.
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Role-playing about disliking your daughter's boyfriend? I suppose it's possible but then that means that you're the kind of person who thinks that "private" role-playing involving racial slurs is acceptable. Not sure how that's better.
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Hulkie Baby, is that you? Really sorry that you were exposed as a racist asshole. Congrats on the lawsuit. What does that work out to per inch?
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It feels very strange to me that someone could be set for life, catapaulted to wealth far beyond what most individuals might accrue, based on a legal judgement like this.
I doubt the amount will stick, juries really have no idea how much in damages to award though the final number will be interesting to see.
It really is possible he's lost $55 million in income since his racist comments on the tape really hurt his career. But should Gawker be on the hook for that, even if they were wrong in publishing the tape?
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It feels very strange to me that someone could be set for life, catapaulted to wealth far beyond what most individuals might accrue, based on a legal judgement like this.
I doubt the amount will stick, juries really have no idea how much in damages to award though the final number will be interesting to see.
It really is possible he's lost $55 million in income since his racist comments on the tape really hurt his career. But should Gawker be on the hook for that, even if they were wrong in publishing the tape?
Note that the summary omits many of the more lurid details of the case, such as:
-The fact that Gawker defied a court order to remove their posted copy of the sex tape: http://gawker.com/a-judge-told-us-to-take-down-our-hulk-hogan-sex-tape-po-481328088
-Court testimony by the Gawker reporter accused that they considered anybody above the age of four (not a typo) to be a valid subject for this kind of article: http://nypost.com/2016/03/09/gawker-editors-line-a-sex-tape-of-a-4-year-old/
The actual testimony is a
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Just because he's a horrible human being doesn't mean he doesn't have rights.
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It feels very strange to me that someone could be set for life, catapaulted to wealth far beyond what most individuals might accrue, based on a legal judgement like this.
Indeed. Another case here is Erin Andrews. She was awarded USD 55 million dollars [telegraph.co.uk] from a hotel chain, because a creep had photographed her naked there.
It didn't do any actual damage - her career seems to have been moving along just fine. And 55 million dollars for not actual damages is utterly and completely insane. When she looks back at this in a couple of years, it will be as one of the best things that ever happened to her - some blurry nude photos of a pretty normal woman, and suddenly her fame fac
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God almighty. You seriously think that women just love being secretly photographed in the nude by peeping toms?
Fuck this place has some real degenerates.
Re:Fair that money was awarded, amount excessive (Score:5, Insightful)
I fear your utter misinterpretation of his fairly simple point.
In related news, hide a camera in my bathroom and the police will be paying you a visit. However, for $55m I'll visit your professional studio so you can photograph me naked. Shit, I'll do a goatse pose and everything.
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55 million? I'll fuck Martha Stewart on national television, during prime time.
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I dunno but I'd probably do that for free. There's something about that woman. She's actually kind of cute for her age. I'm old too. But you're right - I should only be on television for things I'm good at. Sex is probably not one of those things. :/
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I think the number must of been designed to hurt Gawker, instead of to appease Hogan. Anything over single digit millions is a ridiculous number for emotional distress and his remaining career was not any where near worth 100 million, but I am unaware what evidence was brought forward to show that it hurt his career at all.
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Easy, the defense ... was laughable. Let's just say what Gawker did to internet "journalism", they attempted to do same to the judge, jury and the court.
And the jurors did not take kindly
Wrongfully imprisoned people get far less (Score:5, Interesting)
I think these amounts awarded to Hogan and Erin Andrews (TV reporter secretly video recorded nude in her hotel room) are excessive when people who are wrongfully convicted of crimes they didn't commit get fractions of that amount after serving many years in prison.
This guy (http://www.nbcnews.com/id/18715007/) wrongfully convicted of a rape he didn't commit was imprisoned for 18 years and only got $5 million.
And Hogan gets $115 million and Andrews got $55 million? If you use the $5 million figure for false imprisonment, Hogan would have to have been imprisoned for 415 years to justify that amount, Andrews 198 years.
Don't get me wrong, both Hogan and Andrews were wronged, but to what extent were their lives ruined the same way being convicted of rape and losing decades of your life to a prison sentence? Hogan's career as anything but somebody famous for being famous is basically over anyway, and I seriously doubt any of his celebrity has been damaged by viewing him having sex.
Andrews cried crocodile tears on the stand, but how believable is that considering she apparently has no problem continuing to be on TV (new contract, even!)? She's only on TV because of her sex appeal to male sports fans and her entire career since high school has been based around being basically an eye candy accessory (being a cheerleader in high school and college). If anything, her complaint boils down to overexposure, and whatever loss of her allure occurs because now we've seen her naked. She wasn't even caught do anything of the embarrassing "fappening" poses, either, just walking around her hotel room.
I think $5 million probably isn't enough for someone who was jailed for 18 years, although you can probably make some kind of lost earnings argument that is at least grounded in reality. Hogan and Andrews? I can't even begin to see the justification.
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While I agree with you that someone who is wrongfully imprisoned should get considerably more money than they do, wrongful convictions are largely about the criminal justice system, whereas in the civil system the jury often decides the award. That being said, if Gawker can come up with the cash to be able to make an appeal (not certain at this point), the award could be dropped significantly.
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First, it's a government department paying for the shitty/dishonest behaviour of some prosecuting attorney. Second, after years in prison the wrongfully punished can't afford a good attorney. Normal civil cases don't have these problems. While the government likes to cut a my-'bad'-but-no-fine deal with some corporate legal department, a civil plaintiff wants a measurable result and gets it because juries tend to dislike corporate management.
This is why most countries don't allow punitive fines in civil
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There are very few "sports reporters" that one could take seriously as actual journalists. I'd grant ex-pro players who actually have experience playing the sport they "report" on some kind of status as experts in their field, but what expertise does Andrews bring to the table?
Her only sports experience is as a cheerleader. As far as I can tell, her role is on-field "interviewer" where the talent in question is talking into a camera and holding a microphone. Maybe that makes her some kind of a journalist
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You aren't real bright, are you?
Sue Gawker for $115m then they are out $115m.
Sue your local government for $5m ... then YOU ARE THE ONE OUT OF THE $5m and it'll have to be made up via more taxes.
The reality of it is, Erin Andrews didn't deserve more than an apology and Hulk Hogan doesn't deserve even that.
NEITHER OF THEM DESERVE ANY MONEY BECAUSE SOMEONE SAW THEM NAKED.
Do you have any fucking clue how god damn retarded that is? Both of these people spend far more time naked in front of a doctor in a given
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Sue your local government for $5m ... then YOU ARE THE ONE OUT OF THE $5m and it'll have to be made up via more taxes.
The public bears the financial obligation because the public ultimately bears the responsibility of a fair and honest criminal justice system. If you don't want to pay $5 million dollars to someone falsely convicted and jailed for two decades, don't falsely convict and jail people or elect/appoint those that do.
I don't necessarily think that it's smart that the government acts as the primary surety party for misconduct by its agents, as this creates a zero responsibility mindset. You would think that pros
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I think these amounts awarded to Hogan and Erin Andrews (TV reporter secretly video recorded nude in her hotel room) are excessive when people who are wrongfully convicted of crimes they didn't commit get fractions of that amount after serving many years in prison.
It's not a question of who is receiving but of who is paying.
Big penalties paid by corporations to hurt their balance sheet (anything less is ineffective).
Relatively small penalties paid by the city/state, etc. because these people should get something but at the end of the day it's not the people making the false arrest and imprisonment who pay - it's you and I the taxpayers, when we also haven't done anything wrong.
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It feels very strange to me that someone could be set for life, catapaulted to wealth far beyond what most individuals might accrue, based on a legal judgement like this.
What seems strange to me is that a celebrity can sue and win over someone using their personal data, but not a regular individual. In that case it's their data because you were forced to agree to the fine print where you gave up rights to sue. And just to kick you in the teeth they send you their "privacy policy" every year..
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I think Hulk will need millions. Maybe not $115 million (plus punitive damages to be decided), but considering he lost his main revenue sources, I suspect it will be in the millions by the time the dust clears. Maybe he can try to repair his reputation, but I doubt he'll ever be able to get back to where he was before the tape was released.
But I agree with others. Part of this large award isn't about making Hulk Hogan whole again. It's about sending a message to other media companies who operate in that sha
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So then why does all the money go to Hogan? Why doesn't $5M go to Hogan and $110M get divided among a variety of charities?
The charities are not the ones harmed. Hulk Hogan was harmed. If you feel the charities should be getting some of the money, please get out your checkbook and give them the amount your conscience dictates. Better yet, please pay $100 million to the charity of your choice.
LIsten (Score:5, Insightful)
Gawker is garbage.
They lead the charge telling the most astonishing lies about gamers - and getting away with it. They only people crying over this are Gawker's owners and the insane far left SF hordes who used it in their ideological crusade.
May they rot in hell.
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Actually, even GamerGhazi is celebrating this decision. Gawker is that bad. The only people defending them are their corrupt buddies in the media (Polygon in particular) who see themselves on the gallows next.
Rob
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I thought gamer gate did themselves in by threatening to rape women reporters who commented on them, and other stupid stuff.
Since Gamergate has never done any of that. It throws your point right out the window. Though anti-gamergate people have done that, including making their own fake harassment(see Brianna Wu who never left their home). And doxing people(randi harper who did so against bill collectors). I can continue this pretty easily.
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You see it on both the left and right, but the largest concentration of it is within the "progressive" left. They think that "their opponents" are sexist because they themselves can't see past sex, they think that "their opponents" are racist because they themselves cant see past race, and so on....
So the p
Whatcha Gonna Do Gawker (Score:5, Funny)
My 1st thought as to why nobody would help Gawker: (Score:2)
Everybody thinks they should be punished for publishing images of a naked Hulk Hogan.
That's before punitive... (Score:5, Interesting)
If the Hulkster hits the punitive jackpot, the total could be as high as $460M.
That's an utter death blow to Gawker.
Re:That's before punitive... (Score:5, Insightful)
But on the other side. There is a conceivable avenue thorough which Hogan can currently expect payment of his legal winnings. But if he is awarded much more, Gawker just files for bankruptcy, it as a cooperation is destroyed and 99% of their worth (which was always imaginary) goes up in smoke, and maybe Hogan gets a million of two when their office chairs are sold in auction and the couple hundred thousands in operating funds are transferred over to him. Gawker does not have $300 million in gold in their basement, they have a name that is worth money, but if their debts get anywhere near their net worth then it is no longer a viable business and is worthless.
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One does assume Gawker and its corporate officers have bank accounts. Hogan may not get all the money, but he'll get some.
Re:That's before punitive... (Score:5, Insightful)
I doubt Hogan cares as much about getting all the money as he does about seeing Gawker (and Nick Denton) suffer. Watching Gawker go bankrupt, while still having Denton personally on the hook for millions of dollars, would probably be a completely satisfactory outcome to Hogan.
Gawker and its subsidiary websites (e.g. Jezebel) are festering boils on the backside of the Internet. Denton has helped nurture the culture of "trial by Internet outrage", "guilty until proven innocent", and "due process only applies to people I approve of" that permeates the world today. I can think of no possible way that the world will be worse off by putting every Gawker site out of business, and Nick Denton in the poorhouse.
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Re: That's before punitive... (Score:2)
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Except for ... you know ... insurance which ... you know Gawker has, right?
They'll pay next year for insurance premiums, but thats not going to be their death blow.
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Umm, no, insurance companies will NOT pay for punitive damages, only the initial damages.
The most common reason given for this belief is that punitive or exemplary damages are always uninsurable as a matter of law—public policy does not allow payment of such damages. The prohibition of the insurability of punitive damages based on public policy typically hinges on the answer to one overriding question: whether the purposes of punishment and deterrence are defeated by allowing insurance to pay for such
My 0.02 (Score:2)
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Who can I sue ... (Score:2)
Streisand Effect (Score:2)
With over $100 million on the line, I doubt that Hogan cares one iota, but I noticed Hogan sex tape trending their morning on a porn site.
So on the one hand, what Gawker did probably does deserve a punishment, and since this is probably just 1 incident of hundreds or thousands, their is something to the idea of the punishment being significant because most of the time they will get away with it. But anyone suing over a sex tape leak, obviously does not care who and how many see there sex tape.
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I would care, but frankly $100million would make me feel much better about it. There's a lot of things that I would care less about for that sum of money.
time to use the old standby (Score:2)
What is Fair for Personal Damages (Score:3)
Setting aside the whole professional damages area, what is fair for personal damages? Does a poor person get less because money is worth more to them? $10,000 is a shit load of money to me, that is the number that popped into my head as fair for breach of privacy and emotional distress. But to someone worth millions, who goes to $10,000 a plate dinners, obviously emotional distress is worth more to them. They might pay millions to avoid the leaking of a sex tape, while someone who makes $20K a year obviously would not. So are the emotions of rich people actually worth more than the emotions of poor people? What would be a fair way to put that into law?
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Setting aside the whole professional damages area, what is fair for personal damages? Does a poor person get less because money is worth more to them? $10,000 is a shit load of money to me, that is the number that popped into my head as fair for breach of privacy and emotional distress. But to someone worth millions, who goes to $10,000 a plate dinners, obviously emotional distress is worth more to them. They might pay millions to avoid the leaking of a sex tape, while someone who makes $20K a year obviously would not. So are the emotions of rich people actually worth more than the emotions of poor people? What would be a fair way to put that into law?
If someone loses their reputation and livelihood, it is simple enough to do a discounted cashflow projection of their lost future earnings.
However, when it's their own fault, I'm not sure why they would get anything. If you know you'll get fired for having a bit of extra-marital sex, you should either change jobs or keep it zipped.
Comment removed (Score:3)
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"life-threatening event"
Gawker is a corporation, not an actual living entity.
Not according to the Supreme Court.
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Congress thinks otherwise...
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No one expects the SUPREME COURT!
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But we could be the first to actually see a corporation get a capital punishment.
That alone would make the whole trial worth while.
Re:Help! I've Been Colonized And I Can't Get Up! (Score:4, Insightful)
Because it would keep stockholders from acting as the worst sort of absentee owner allowing their evil sociopathic corporate child to run roughshod over everything.
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I am assuming that if that condition exists, they will demand indemnification from the major shareholders, demand that the corporations make appropriate agreements with anyone it has significant debt with, demand greater control, or not invest in corporations.
That's not to say there wouldn't be problems with complete liability, but there is some justification for more liability than exists now, especially in the case of criminal acts.
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The issue becomes one of means and intent. If I buy stocks in a company through, I get little in the way of say in the company's actions, and I certainly cannot be accused of being part of a conspiracy if the company poisons a bunch of people or does something else nefarious. This would be like demanding all taxpayers be imprisoned because the government did something awful.
As to corporate personhood, while perhaps it is interpreted too far judicially, the original notion was simply that a corporation could
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While one could, I suppose, grant all shareholders pieces of the balance sheet based on the proportion of their ownership, it would be a very complicated system.
Isn't there such a thing as voting and non-voting stock?
I'd think that one solution would be that the entirety of the value of the voting stock could be considered corporate assets, to be distributed to creditors if the corporation is dissolved. That way the people who actually had the power to make things right but didn't can't simply run off with big sacks of money. Basically, if you want the power to make big money decisions, you must invest your own financial future in the corporation by purchasing ri
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> Isn't there such a thing as voting and non-voting stock?
There are many types of corporations, including private and public. EFF and the Linux Foundation are both corporations. There are a lot of variations and I can not say, in any particular direction, which one it is that this is - I've never looked nor will I bother today. In short, most people don't have voting stock. Even those who do have voting stock, may not have much say - votes may also count for various amounts.
I'm not sure that I support im
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The stock is a share in the corporation, so if the corporation has no net assets and is dissolving, then the stock is worthless.
Said another way, the stockholders get paid last (after creditors) when a corporation dissolves.
Ah yes, that's right. A stock is only 'worth' as much as someone is willing to pay for it.
Okay then, new proposal: to hold voting stock, a person would need to maintain in escrow personal funds equivalent to the highest share price over the last 12 months. These funds would need to be held in a bond or something equally secure (i.e., they can't be 'held' in more of the corporation's shares) and would then be surrendered to creditors et al if the corporation went under. The value of the held funds may not
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That's a good way to insure the death of venture capital and IPOs. After all with the current legal environment a shareholder can't legally know what is going on inside the company when deciding what to do with their stock so no one would be foolish enough to take on the liability when they have no say in what happens inside the company (other than the occasional election of officers/board members) and no knowledge of what those people are doing outside of what is public knowledge.
The only way this idea wor
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They are responsible to the amounts invested. But they take absolutely no actions in the running of the company so why should they be responsible for more than that? It is not like they participated in anything.
And no - profiting from illegal activities does not directly translate to shareholders profits. You could liken those more to someone who robbed a bank going to McDonald's. McDonald's Will not lose the money it collected for that big Mac and soda even though it was purchased with the loot from the h
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Well, not always but a pyramid scheme is already illegal. Owning stocks or shares in a company is not. In fact, the law creates a fiduciary duty to those running the company which preclude them from doing illegal activities. However, illegal activities is not the only way businesses fail.
Here is a problem with taking more than your investment if a company does something illegal or just fails through no actions of your own. Most people who are investing in corporations are investing through some managed fu
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It was recorded without his or the woman's consent. The woman and her husband had an open marriage, the man encouraged them to have sex and recorded it secretly. He then sold it to make money.
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No. Gawker knew damned well that it wasn't news or at all in the public interest to post it without permission. They did it hoping to give themselves a big boost. Even the Enquirer knows better than that.
There is plenty of blame to go around, but it was Gawker that took the availability from a small circle of people to the whole damned internet.
Re:HA HA (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm always in favor of seeing celebrity gossip "news" sites in pain. Honestly, who gives a fuck about what time Tom Cruise took a shit last night? If you read celebrity news because it gives you something to gossip to your friends about, then you are a piece of shit. This is (even if it's not gossip) by far the worst form of "journalism" that exists, and people have to have no life at all and/or a huge inferiority complex to even care about it.
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It should be noted that ArmoredDragon is in fact Tom Cruise's alias. And he went to the bathroom last night at 9:40PM. Rumor has it that it was a bowel movement.
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Actually, the whole celebrity thing is changing - gone are the d
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Uhh... You're talking about Trekkies, right?
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You do realize that you, and a whole lot of other readers, are being trolled - right? As in, trolled by multiple parties - each taking a poke in step, and you're falling for it... Yes, those sites are just giving you a reason to be pissed. They know it pisses you off. They know it brings them eyeballs. They know it's lucrative and you fall for it every single time.
I swear, Pavlov had a point. Do you not fucking notice the bell any longer?
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So you are supporting the #Fappening? Or is it only wrong when it happen to women? [giantbomb.com]
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If you are stupid enough to get recorded fucking
Do you even understand the concept of a secret recording? The point of a secret recording is that people caught by the recording device have no idea that they are being recorded, which makes it impossible for them to give consent to be recorded.
This is like saying that Erin Andrews' is at fault for herself being secretly recorded in her hotel room. Erin is the sports reporter that recently won a law suit against Marriott over secretly created nude footage. A hotel employee told her stalker what room she was
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Then you're an idiot who has failed to grasp the legal issues here.
He didn't know he was being recorded. He didn't consent to being recorded. He didn't give permission to release the tape.
Gawker then used the celebrity of someone who had no idea the tape was being made to drive traffic to their website and make a profit.
I'm going to have to come down on the side of punishing douchebag journalism on this one.
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1) He didn't know he was being recorded. He didn't consent to being recorded. He didn't give permission to release the tape.
2) Gawker then used the celebrity of someone who had no idea the tape was being made to drive traffic to their website and make a profit.
3) Gawker then ignored a court order to take the content down.
Re: 3 Fucks Given (Score:3)
Victim-blaming is the worst sort of lazy thinking. I'm not gonna sweep my room for bugs every night, and nobody should have to. Apologizing for illicit voyeurism is just creepy.
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Shit, if it's worth 115 million, I'm going to go stay down at the Merriot on 98A, I'll be back with a room number. You want me to get a hooker? There's a strip bar along the way. Hell, there's a gay bar along the way too. I am not scared. ;-)
That's humor, bad humor but humor. The big difference here is that I would /know/ about it (now that I've said it). Mr. Hogan was offered no such luxury.
Has anyone watched this video? I confess, I have not seen it - nor looked for it. It's probably out there. Anyhow, I'
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The thing is that he has a right to be a secret extreme racist. People are actually allowed to believe whatever they fuck they want to believe. I know, crazy stuff right there.
There are some that demand that beliefs be labeled acceptable or unacceptable, so that they can then assign differing levels of "justifiable treatment" to people based on their beliefs. This demand is mo
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I'm thinking you must have missed my other comments in this thread? I'm the guy, partially black even, who doesn't think that they had any right to publish this and that doing so was harmful and that they deserve to be hit hard enough, financially, to be required to close their doors.
I don't give a shit if he was the most horrible person on the planet. It's the most horrible people who need the protections and full force of law to ensure they are given their rights and liberties.
Re: $50m bond (Score:2)
I read elsewhere they netted about $8M last year. Nobody sane will lend them $50M if they they are facing punitive damages still and were last sold for $200M. This might well bankrupt the corporation (though the brand would be sold in liquidation). I don't think Hulk will see that much money.
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Oh, I was wondering how in the world a sex video could harm a professional wrestlers careers.
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Remember Thunder in Paradise? He's that guy.
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Ha...someone modded this a troll. Gawker fan, I suppose.
*yawn*
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Pfft... Who's gonna go against Hulk Hogan? What, are ya gonna have someone sneak up on him and hit him with a chair?