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posted by janrinok on Saturday September 17 2016, @04:57AM   Printer-friendly
from the open-up-libel-laws dept.

AlterNet reports

A new report by the Huffington Post [September 15] reveals Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump told Peter Thiel he would nominate the PayPal co-founder and one-man anti-free speech crusader to the Supreme Court if elected president.

Thiel--who bankrolled a devastating blow to First Amendment rights earlier this year when he secretly paid $10 million in legal expenses to support Hulk Hogan's defamation lawsuit against Gawker Media--is apparently just the type of freedom-loving, Bill of Rights-protecting intellectual Trump hopes to stack on the Supreme Court.

A source close to Thiel told Huffington Post the GOP candidate "deeply loves Peter Thiel", which isn't terribly surprising considering Thiel served as a delegate for Trump, spoke at the candidate's convention, and pretty much became a walking how-to guide for Trump's promise to "open up libel laws". According to the source, Trump has "made it clear he will nominate" Thiel.

"It's not clear whether Trump has indeed offered to nominate Thiel--only that Thiel has said Trump would nominate him and that Trump's team has discussed Thiel as a possible nominee", the Huffington Post article reads. "Both sources requested anonymity, given that Trump and Thiel have each demonstrated a willingness to seek revenge against parties they feel have wronged them."

Both Thiel's spokesperson and Trump's press secretary denied Trump's indication, and Thiel--who sits on Facebook's board and serves as the chairman of the software company Palantir--told the Huffington Post he's not interested in the job.

We've previously referenced Thiel in contexts from "Mean People" to vampirism.

See also:
Trump camp denies report that he would consider Peter Thiel for Supreme Court
Peter Thiel denies he's talking to Donald Trump about Supreme Court job.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 17 2016, @08:12AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 17 2016, @08:12AM (#403061)

    Peter Thiel is SUCH an 'anti free speech crusader' that he believes companies shouldn't be able to profit by broadcasting sex tapes of people without their permission! What a monster!

    Bullshit alert is right. Because your post is 100% bullshit.

    Destroying a company is completely disproportionate to the offense of showing a 90 second clip from Hogan's sex tape. That lack of proportionality should concern anyone. What else does Thiel think is appropriate, the death penalty for jaywalking?

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 17 2016, @09:42AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday September 17 2016, @09:42AM (#403079) Journal
    What's "a company"?
    • (Score: 2) by dry on Sunday September 18 2016, @02:11AM

      by dry (223) on Sunday September 18 2016, @02:11AM (#403268) Journal

      English speakers call a business a company.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday September 18 2016, @09:47AM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday September 18 2016, @09:47AM (#403323) Journal
        So we should allow malicious libel, if punishing it would sink the one man, part time companies for tax purposes?

        I would have thought people would be ecstatic that there is a "corporate death penalty". But perhaps, that should only be applied to companies they don't like?
        • (Score: 2) by dry on Monday September 19 2016, @12:28AM

          by dry (223) on Monday September 19 2016, @12:28AM (#403556) Journal

          The death penalty seems pretty extreme for libel, especially in a country that has a Constitution containing a Bill of Rights that prevents laws against libel being passed. And suing and winning disparate penalties is also crazy and couldn't happen in most countries.
          Now sinking the economy, maliciously polluting or lying about pollution controls as well as killing people through willful neglect perhaps should deserve the corporate death penalty.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by CirclesInSand on Saturday September 17 2016, @03:44PM

    by CirclesInSand (2899) on Saturday September 17 2016, @03:44PM (#403152)

    You can rebuild a company. You can't rebuild a secret.

    There really is no such thing as compensation for an invasion of privacy. It can't be undone.

    That's not to say that the loss of a company is small, you can never get back the time you spent making a it. But the privacy loss from trespassing and theft is pretty permanent.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 17 2016, @04:15PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 17 2016, @04:15PM (#403166)

      Oh please. That's a cop-out. I have a secret - its how many coins are in my pocket. If you tell anyone then you deserve to lose your entire livelihood and start over from scratch.

      If the cost of revealing a "secret" is immeasurable then why should the punishment be the end of the company rather nothing at all? Once you start trying to equate them then you have to do so proportionally. When people are killed we calculate wrongful death compensation and nobody has ever got $100M+ for a single death. Why should a 90 second sex tape be worth that?

    • (Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Sunday September 18 2016, @01:55PM

      by GungnirSniper (1671) on Sunday September 18 2016, @01:55PM (#403362) Journal

      Not to mention the disregard of a court order to remove the clip.