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SLAPP Suits: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

LastWeekTonight2 HN recommenders · 2020–2021
27.2M views · commentary · evergreen · Uploaded 2019-11-11

John Oliver explains SLAPP suits, lawsuits designed to silence critics through legal costs, after his show's legal fight with coal executive Bob Murray. It covers how such suits work and why state anti-SLAPP laws matter.

HN recommends it whenever legal threats against critics or open-source authors come up, often as the best accessible primer on SLAPP suits.

Law, policing & justiceFree speech, censorship & civil libertiesMedia, journalism & propaganda

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4 comments from Hacker News

@notpiika2020 · in “Bob Murray, Who Fought Regulations as a Coal Operator, Files for Lung Benefits”

If you haven't already seen them, John Oliver's Last Week Tonight episodes on Murray are great watches. [LINK] [VIDEO]

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@luc4sdreyer2020 · in “Coal baron Robert Murray has died”

And after he was sued by Robert Murray for the above episode, the follow up episode [1] won an Emmy award [2] [1] [VIDEO] [2] [LINK]

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@input_sh2021 · in “EFF sues Proctorio on behalf of student falsely DMCA'd”

SLAPP suits (acronym for Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) are designed to shut up critics, plain and simple. They're not designed to be won, they're designed to be an annoyance to those that are being sued, dragged on as much as possible, and incur as many legal fees for the defendant as possible. The end goal is simply for other people's self-censorship to kick in. As in, when other people want to criticise Proctorio, there's a chance they're gonna stumble upon this lawsuit and decide against speaking up. Highly recommend this John Oliver video. In my opinion, it's the best one they've ever done with an absolutely magnificent ending: [VIDEO]

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@munk-a2021 · in “Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project”

John Oliver is actually a really good source for this sort of point as he dedicated an episode[1] to the trials and tribulations of his lawsuit against Murray Energy - something he described as a SLAPP suit which I think is a fair viewpoint. The replit case is especially interesting since it could be a lot more personal (because the dev behind it previously worked for them and people hold grudges) and also because it might actually be a lot more valid then a lot of other frivolous C&Ds we see (since they were a former employee and it would be impossible to claim they were unaware of how replit worked at a very basic level). I think this lawsuit is a lot riskier than most and replit certainly does have a leg to stand on in open court. 1. [VIDEO]

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