It's interesting watching the semantics shape the response on this one. "The end justifies the means" is the flip side of "justice can only be delivered by the just" which, okay, but that's a very Western view of justice. Eastern philosophy would argue that karma cannot be denied and that its instrument is irrelevant. An Abrahamic tradition would argue that justice is abstract while vengeance is concrete.

And let's take a step back, shall we? Peter Thiel legally underwrote Hogan's suit. Everything here is entirely above the board. 'member when OJ Simpson was innocent of murder in a criminal court, but liable for wrongful death in a civil court? I mean, you can be all uptight about how Thomas Aquinas or some shit wouldn't pursue every legal remedy available to him because it's somehow impure but anyone who thinks civil courts are just isn't paying attention.

"The ends justifies the means" is the high-brow intellectual way of saying "playing dirty is worse than not playing" without understanding that fuckin' Joseph Pulitzer created a prize for journalism so that the world would forget that he talked the US into going to war with Spain via lies, slander, exaggeration and libel. This idea that journalists are somehow pure and unsullied by greed or vanity is purest tripe; pick me a journalist and I'll show you how he or she bent the law and crushed skulls to get to where they are.

They perform a valuable service, and their freedom should be respected. But they shouldn't be treated like saints. They aren't. They just want you to think they are because they protect you from the government or some shit. Unless they're helping the Bush Administration rush us into war, etc.

"The ends justifies the means."

"A self-made tech billionaire underwrote the substantial legal expenses of a man who was videotaped having sex without his consent and whose performance was edited for salaciousness and then published widely. The billionaire was motivated by the publisher's sensationalist disclosure of his sexual orientation."

Things are so twisted-to-fuck that we've decided that's somehow dirty. On the one hand, we've got Gawker, who pays people to tell them gossip so they can get clicks. On the other hand, we've got two people whose sexual lives were invaded for money and somehow, we're trying to paint them up as the bad guys.

If this were lex talionis shit, Thiel would have done everything he could to smear Al Daulerio all over every front page on the planet:

Q. Well, can you imagine a situation where a celebrity sex tape would not be newsworthy?

A. If they were a child.

Q. Under what age?

A. Four.

But he didn't. He assisted a wronged party in assuming redress in a civil court, and Gawker lost.

You can feel bad about that. I can't stop you. But you can't make me feel bad because in my opinion? Nick Denton dying of pancreatic syphilis under experimentation by Unit 731 would be A-OK. Do the ends justify the means? Who cares? I'll go one further: the ends have nothing to do with the means.