That's fair. In fact, since it's First Amendment Day apparently, I commented on the John Oliver article on Murray filing his case in Marshall County, West Virgina and talking about Hilary Clinton being a good strategy despite it's legal irrelevance. So I see what you're saying with the state courts. And both the…

They're lucky that such an obvious villain decided to side with Hogan. If he didn't, they and their supporters would have even less to go on.

You also target reprehensible ones because they could have broke settled law. We have privacy torts for a reason. They have not been categorically elimated them on First Amendment grounds. The exceptions are built in precisely for the reprehensible actors! I don't think it should be a surprise or a watershed moment…

Right and malice is usually shown by knowing the falsehood and publishing anyway, or reckless disregard for whether the info was true or not.

It's a West Virgina one though.

Yeah, but a lot of that mistrust they experienced was based on 25 years of Republican demonization, which certainly had sexist roots.

Just because he was Egyptian, can we really know his religion? He could have believed in the Norse gods for all we know!

Scientists who have massive financial incentives to agree to fake global warming data.

And since Murray would likely be a public figure and Oliver was talking about matters of public interest, he only needs to show he didn't have actual knowledge of any falsehood or a reckless disregard for the truth, which is even easier.

Didn't you read the complaint? He's going die before the end because John Oliver hastened his demise.

Haha. Like Time Warner is going to give up. While they're suing Oliver and HBO directly, which seem "small" compared to an energy giant like Murray, they're also taking on Time Warner both directly and indirectly. They will stick by their people. They may hate net neutrality and antitrust regulation, but they probably…

Exactly. Even without the existence of actual bribery or campaign donations, there's still a cult-of-coal in a lot of places in WV. Never hurts to talk about someone's anti-coal agenda there.

Not if you file your case in Marshall County Circuit Court. I thought it was weird that they were talking about Hilary which is completely irrelevant, and then I read the complaint and noticed where it was filed so this is just waiving the coal-flag before it gets removed to federal court.

I never said I don't want to see it. The Sheldon Adleson issue is actually really important. I picked the two most infamous cases precisely because it undercuts this narrative that the demise of Gawker is some watershed moment in the destruction of a free press. Although it never made it into litigation, the outing of…

Eugene Volokh, one of the most Pro-First Amendment experts out there, thought Gawker was going to have an uphill battle under existing law. Erwin Chemerwinsky, another con law heavyweight, thinks the Hogan case didn't damage press freedom. I'll see who the other experts are and what their arguments are, but I don't…

The law is capable of drawing lines. One court victory on these facts doesn't mean the end of a free press. Indeed, the press as a whole has been vigorous during this new administration. When you look at how the law develops over time you'll see general rules and exceptions. Sometimes those exceptions swallow the…

What "story" won't get published though? A minor celebrity sextape that was stolen? The private sex life of an executive at a rival company who no one ever heard of?

The Democrats?

Oxfordians

The amount of anger it must take to write a death threat to anyone over anything honestly sounds exhausting. My righteous anger can really only sustain at most one or two reasonably well researched internet comments and a few snarky responses before burning out. I guess social media makes it easy these days, but…