Gawker was an American blog founded by Nick Denton and Elizabeth Spiers that was based in New York City and focused on celebrities and the media industry. According to SimilarWeb, the site had over 23 million visits per month as of 2015. Founded in 2002, Gawker was the flagship blog for Denton's Gawker Media. Gawker Media also managed other blogs such as Jezebel, io9, Deadspin and Kotaku.
Gawker Media LLC was an American online media company and blog network. It was founded by Nick Denton in October 2003 as Blogwire, and was based in New York City. Incorporated in the Cayman Islands, as of 2012, Gawker Media was the parent company for seven different weblogs and many subsites under them: Gawker.com, Deadspin, Lifehacker, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Jalopnik, and Jezebel. All Gawker articles are licensed on a Creative Commons attribution-noncommercial license. In 2004, the company renamed from Blogwire, Inc. to Gawker Media, Inc., and to Gawker Media LLC shortly after.
Aaron Hillel Swartz was an American computer programmer, entrepreneur, writer, political organizer, and Internet hacktivist. As a programmer, Swartz helped develop the web feed format RSS; the technical architecture for Creative Commons, an organization dedicated to creating copyright licenses; the website framework web.py; and the lightweight markup language format Markdown. Swartz was involved in the development of the social news aggregation website Reddit until he departed from the company in 2007. He is often credited as a martyr and a prodigy, and his work focused on civic awareness and activism.
John Dragonetti is an American composer, songwriter, and music producer based in Los Angeles, California. He is also a founding member of the band The Submarines.
We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists is a 2012 documentary film about the workings and beliefs of the self-described "hacktivist" collective, Anonymous.
The Day We Fight Back was a one-day global protest against mass surveillance by the US National Security Agency (NSA), the UK GCHQ, and the other Five Eyes partners involved in global surveillance. The "digital protest" took place on February 11, 2014 with more than 6,000 participating websites, which primarily took the form of webpage banner-advertisements that read, "Dear Internet, we're sick of complaining about the NSA. We want new laws that curtail online surveillance. Today we fight back." Organizers hoped lawmakers would be made aware "that there's going to be ongoing public pressure until these reforms are instituted."
The 2014 Sundance Film Festival took place from January 16, 2014 until January 26, 2014 in Park City, Utah, United States, with screenings in Salt Lake City, Ogden, and Sundance Resort in Utah. The festival opened with Whiplash directed by Damien Chazelle and closed with musical drama Rudderless directed by William H. Macy.
The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz is a 2014 American biographical documentary film about Aaron Swartz written, directed, and produced by Brian Knappenberger. The film premiered in the US Documentary Competition program category at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival on January 20, 2014.
Killswitch is a documentary film about the battle for control over the Internet. The movie is a collaboration between director Ali Akbarzadeh, producer Jeffrey Horn, writer Christopher Dollar and Akorn Entertainment. It premiered at the Woodstock Film Festival in October 2014, where it won the James K. Lyons Award for Best Editing of a feature documentary and then made its international debut, playing alongside Citizenfour at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam in November 2014. In 2015, it screened on Capitol Hill, as well as film festivals on four continents. Theatrical release was on March 1, 2015. Kathy Gill of GeekWire writes that "Killswitch is much more than a dry recitation of technical history. Director Ali Akbarzadeh, producer Jeff Horn, and writer Christopher Dollar created a human centered story. A large part of that connection comes from Lessig and his relationship with Swartz."
The Hacker Wars is a 2014 documentary film about hacktivism in the United States, directed by Vivien Lesnik Weisman. It was released on October 17, 2014 in the US.
Bollea v. Gawker was a lawsuit filed in 2013 in the Circuit Court of the Sixth Judicial Circuit in Pinellas County, Florida, delivering a verdict on March 18, 2016. In the suit, Terry Gene Bollea, known professionally as Hulk Hogan, sued Gawker Media, publisher of the Gawker website, and several Gawker employees and Gawker-affiliated entities for posting portions of a sex tape of Bollea with Heather Clem, at that time the wife of radio personality Bubba the Love Sponge. Bollea's claims included invasion of privacy, infringement of personality rights, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Prior to trial, Bollea's lawyers said the privacy of many Americans was at stake while Gawker's lawyers said that the case could hurt freedom of the press in the United States.
Truth and Power is an "investigative docuseries", narrated by Maggie Gyllenhaal and executive produced by Brian Knappenberger. It premiered on Pivot on January 22, 2016. Each episode tells the stories of "ordinary people going to extraordinary lengths to reveal corporate exploitation and infringement on civil liberties resulting from government overreach." The documentaries use interviews and uncovered documents to discuss the "issues of security, surveillance and profiteering in the digital age."
The 2017 Sundance Film Festival took place from January 19 to January 29, 2017. The first lineup of competition films was announced November 30, 2016.
Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press is a 2017 Netflix documentary directed by Brian Knappenberger. The documentary is themed around the effects of big money on American journalism. The documentary focuses on two incidents: Peter Thiel financing wrestler Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker Media, and casino owner Sheldon Adelson's secret purchase of the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Albert James Daulerio is an American writer and blogger. He is the former editor of Gawker and Deadspin. Daulerio published an excerpt of Hulk Hogan's sex tape, which led to a lawsuit and the bankruptcy and sale of Gawker Media.
The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez is a 2020 American true crime documentary television series about the 2013 murder and abuse of Gabriel Fernandez, an eight-year-old boy from Palmdale, California. It was released on Netflix as a six-part miniseries on February 26, 2020.
On May 24, 2013, Gabriel Fernandez, an eight-year-old boy from Palmdale, California, who had been abused and tortured over a period of months, died due to a beating from his mother, Pearl Fernandez, and her boyfriend, Isauro Aguirre, two days earlier. Pearl Fernandez and Isauro Aguirre were charged and convicted of first-degree murder with special circumstances of torture. According to prosecutors, Aguirre allegedly abused Gabriel due to his perceived homosexuality. Pearl was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole and Aguirre was sentenced to death.
Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror is a 2021 American five-part docuseries created for Netflix and directed by Brian Knappenberger. It was produced by Luminant Media. The series documents the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001 in New York City's Lower Manhattan, as well as the events that took place both in Afghanistan and the United States, which led to the attacks. It was released on September 1, 2021.
Web of Make Believe: Death, Lies and the Internet is an anthology true crime docuseries, directed by Brian Knappenberger, released on Netflix on June 15, 2022. The series explores instances of digital misinformation and its consequences.
