This is how we lose free speech

TechDirt is a treasures of journalism. They're a small independent media company that covers tech and calls out corruption like no one else. Day after day, they push back against companies, governments, and politicians that try to spin reality for their own interests.

Now they need our support. TechDirt is being sued for $15 million by Shiva Ayyadurai, an entrepreneur who claims to be the inventor fo email. TechDirt published a series of posts fact-checking Ayyadurai’s claims and concluding that he probably did not invent email. Ayyadurai’s lawsuit argues that these posts amount to libel.

Ayyadurai has hired the same attorney that Peter Thiel used to take down Gawker Media, and Thiel has so far refused to say if he is funding this lawsuit. Thiel and his attorney managed to bankrupt a company that was orders of magnitude larger than TechDirt, so there’s little doubt that this lawsuit is an existential threat to TechDirt. Even if TechDirt “wins,” the costs of defending themselves against these charges could be too much for them to withstand.  

Saving TechDirt is important, but there’s something even bigger at stake here. Powerful players in the tech industry seem to think they can bully journalists into silence through money and spurious lawsuits. For the sake of our most basic freedoms, we must fight back.

TechDirt’s editor, Mike Masnick, puts it best: "Whether or not you agree with us on our opinions about various things, I hope that you can recognize the importance of what's at stake here. Our First Amendment is designed to enable a free and open press—a press that can investigate and dig, a press that can challenge and expose. And if prominent individuals can make use of a crippling legal process to silence that effort, or even to create chilling effects among others, we become a weaker nation and a weaker people because of it."

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Please add your name to show support for TechDirt, and then share this page. It’s important that we spread awareness about what is happening and make a strong show of support for free speech and freedom of the press. Otherwise people like Peter Thiel will continue suing independent journalists out of existence.