@monroe67 wrote:Nobody ever said the Steiners had their First Amendment rights violated or stomped on by coercion or intimidation.
@monroe67 a federal prosecutor and one of the judges involved have stated they believe what eBay did to the Steiners did at least violate the spirit and values of the First Amendment, constitutional interpretation arguments not withstanding.
US Attorney Seth Kosto explicitly called out the White Knight Strategy to out Fidomaster/unsuckEBAY (a frequent commenter and source) as particularly egregious, abhorrent to First Amendment values and cause for significant sanction in his sentencing memorandum in the criminal case against Cooke.
"First, Cooke and his co-conspirators targeted the Victims based on what they had written and published, and because they had made space for others to publish in comments beneath the Newsletter’s articles. Journalism about public companies, especially the world’s largest ecommerce brands, is important to investors, merchants, and customers alike.
That some at eBay disagreed with the Newsletter’s coverage, and that Baugh shared that sentiment as justification to target the Victims, is abhorrent to First Amendment values.
While there is no good reason to harass and intimidate anyone, the logic that led to the Victims’ suffering is absurd. Accepting for purposes of argument that Cooke and others were focused on Fidomaster and his online critiques, they harassed the Victims as a means of identifying and discrediting Fidomaster. That Cooke and others targeted innocent third parties is worthy of significant sanction...
...Cooke asserts that, in the August 6 meeting, he tried to talk his colleagues out of at least some parts of the harassment campaign. But what remained, even in his telling, was a series of increasingly harassing messages directed to a journalist, to set up a sting, to enable Gilbert to make a false offer of assistance, to predispose Victim 1 to help eBay with its Fidomaster problem."
Judge William G. Young also admonished Veronica Zea at sentencing, saying her failure to recognize and defend the principles of free speech have broad implications beyond just this case.
"When did you learn about the First Amendment, isn't that something they taught before you got out of school? We're talking about speech.
It is properly said that the First Amendment doesn't protect the speech that we like, that's easy, it protects the speech that we hate. You should have understood that.
It is no excuse that this was your first job. And the implications of this case, this particular case, your case, resonate throughout society...
...you are saddled with the knowledge that when it came to you, you did not fight for or defend the First Amendment of our Constitution, it seems that you did not even recognize it. That's extraordinarily sad."
And very ironically, Devin Wenig even took a stand on the side of press freedom against rich corporate interests in 2016 when asked his opinion on the controversy then brewing between Gawker Media and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel when it was discovered Thiel had been stealth funding various lawsuits against Gawker, with the explicit purpose of bringing it down. https://www.vox.com/2016/5/26/11792922/gawker-nick-denton-peter-thiel-open-letter
At Recode Conference 2016, Wenig was asked:
Is it right for a billionaire to put large amounts of money secretly behind lawsuits seemingly to settle a political a personal score and to try to put a publication out of business?
He said :
"I'm gonna answer the broader question which is, I side with a free media and a free press.
I think we've got to be very careful. It is a nuanced argument there's always a pull and tug but something feels like it's different. All First Amendment rights aren't created equal.
There's a strong public interest in a free press and rich and powerful people have First Amendment rights too but if you allow that to be unfettered and what that causes is a real stifling of voices and a real concentration of media.
...We're not going to like the result of that and that really goes back all the way to the Constitution. So I don't want to get into all of that but we've got to be really careful that powerful voices don't knock down what I call divergent points of view.
You know this immediate kerfuffle, I don't like the media actor [Gawker]. I don't read what they do. I don't find it particularly valuable but that's irrelevant.
What's more relevant is that you shouldn't be allowed to drive media companies from expressing divergent points of view and I think we've got to be really careful about that."
"You shouldn't be allowed to drive media companies from expressing divergent points of view"...sort of makes you wonder what changed in 3 years, doesn't it?
