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Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

nytimes.com

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Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#331

Post by vel0city »

logicchains wrote: post #164
latexr wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is dangerously close to making the penalty the loss of his first amendment rights. It’s fascinating (and worrying) how the people who cry the loudest about the first amendment are the ones who least understand it. The right to free speech doesn’t mean you can say literally anything without consequences. If you’re a deliberate liar who provably lies to profit and harm others, you can and should be punished. I’m…

>If you’re a deliberate liar who provably lies to profit and harm others, you can and should be punished. The first amendment absolutely gives you the right to lie, and the right to profit from that lying if you're not explicitly committing fraud or defaming anyone. You may disagree with it, but that's what the law is.

Have you really never heard of perjury or fraud before?

You don't have a right to lie.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#332

Post by toomuchtodo »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #307
munk-a wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's complicated - it went to the bidder that would result in the two largest debtors being the happiest with the outcome but that bidder didn't bid the most money in a regular manner. The structure of the bid was quite complex but essentially the largest debtor agreed to enlarge the share the second largest debtor would receive by supplementing it from their own share due to the awards in the two court cases being s…

> went to the bidder that would result in the two largest debtors being the happiest with the outcome but that bidder didn't bid the most money in a regular manner The creditors own the asset. If every dollar the creditors are owed voted, which bid would they choose?

> The creditors own the asset

If this is the case, dollars voted are less important than outcome value to the creditors. It is their asset, no? They are assigning value and signaling accordingly.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#333

Post by rtkwe »

HWR_14 wrote: post #315
rtkwe wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main reasoning by the judge seemed to be that a single round sealed bid process is unlikely to maximize the sale price which on it's surface seems pretty accurate. So long as the families forgoing parts of their judgements is allowed to be part of the bids though any competing bids seem doomed, it's a big war chest they can throw around that's essentially meaningless because they'll never be able to collect it an…

I thought the other reason was that some creditors were trying to use their debt forgiveness as a credit to purchase inforwars. Which obviously doesn't make sense in a bankruptcy, since the whole point is the creditors are not going to get paid back 100%.

Certain creditors giving up some of their claim can shift more money to other creditors effectively increasing the amount paid out by the estate, thereby satisfying more creditors so it's completely kosher just slightly odd. It's unusual because most companies are just companies and the creditors have less/no emotional investment in anything other than receiving the maximum amount of money from the bankruptcy.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#334

Post by pookha »

latexr wrote: post #106
akira2501 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> This is dangerously close to making the penalty the loss of his first amendment rights. It’s fascinating (and worrying) how the people who cry the loudest about the first amendment are the ones who least understand it. The right to free speech doesn’t mean you can say literally anything without consequences. If you’re a deliberate liar who provably lies to profit and harm others, you can and should be punished. I’m…

You're stretching it. In the US the government can't arrest for causing offense to someone specifically because of the 1st amendment...You can get sued for libel (very high bar and it's notoriously difficult in the US) but you're not going to be rounded up and put into a corrections facility for being offensive.

This is the perfect illustration of the first amendment in the US vs the UK. In the UK a violent Maoist (red guard-like) police mob went after teenager for causing offense: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12399911/Revealed-M...

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#335

Post by sophacles »

zztop44 wrote: post #225
logicchains wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually generally for emotional damage you don't. In the US you're perfectly free to insult someone and hurt their feelings without being liable to pay them damages.

That hugely depends on the circumstances.

No it really doesn't. There are no legal consequences for insulting someone, unless you actually defame them. Nearly all defamation cases are dismissed by the court immediately for not rising to the very high level of facts required for defamation.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#336

Post by preciousoo »

karaterobot wrote: post #313
preciousoo wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about in a case where libel was relentlessly thrown at families over the course of years, on one of the internets largest and most engaged audiences, leading to harassment, threats, and assault? What should the judgment be for that?

You just repeated the thing he said was not worth $1 billion dollars, and then said "but isn't that worth a billion dollars?!"

I emphasized that it wasn’t just over words said, but the frequency of, audience size, and actual real world harm that’s taken place as a result. And as other commenters have pointed out, he acted in contempt of the court on several occasions

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#337

Post by onemoresoop »

bhouston wrote: post #139
onemoresoop wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that asset of any use at this point? Even onion’s bid seems like a waste of money to me

Could Elon or a billionaire friend of his buy it, at a slightly higher price than the Onion offered, and then employ Alex Jones as a host? InfoWars is worth nothing if not for Alex Jones right. So if you want to maximize value, you need to somehow keep him around to serve his audience.

Alex Jones owes a lot of money after the lawsuits against hi , if he was hired back at Infowars everything he made would be clawed over. Second, Alex Jobes is what his followers are interested in, if he still has any followers left. Anyone else who buys this asset will not be able to extract any value from it.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#338

Post by cthalupa »

wakawaka28 wrote: post #67
cess11 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He can't pay his debts. What alternative to bankruptcy do you propose?

I'm not arguing against bankruptcy. I'm saying that bankruptcy is a structured process that is supposed to generate monetary outcomes for everyone. Selling off assets in a non-competitive process is basically a criminal move, especially if you collude with one of the bidders who is also a creditor. Bankruptcy itself aside, the judgement against Alex Jones here is huge. I haven't looked it up but I'm sure it broke rec…

Sealed auctions are a competitive manner and the sandy hook families are in all practical reality the only creditors of note. Their damages absolutely dwarf his other creditors to the point where they were already in line to effectively receive nothing. Going against the will of the families is absurd to begin with.

> But clearly restitution is not the objective.

Sure. And damages can be punitive in nature.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#340

Post by bluGill »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #238
bluGill wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will the losing bidders drop out, or not? In a sealed bid you have to guess what others will bid - you want to bid $1 more than your competitors (or if you will lose the bid make your competitor pay as much as possible). The judge is saying because the bids were seals losing bidders had no clue what their correct bid is and some are likely to have bid less than they would have in open bidding. Who is right I don't kn…

> judge is saying because the bids were seals losing bidders had no clue what their correct bid is and some are likely to have bid less than they would have in open bidding. Who is right I don't know. Sealed-bid auctions are incredibly common across markets [1]. Real estate. Corporate mergers. Note, too, that an English auction is revenue equivalent to a second-price sealed-bid auction [2], and here we had a first-pr…

I am not disagreeing with anything you have said here. Sealed-bid is common. Sometimes it works well, sometimes it doesn't. It is debatable if it is better or not.
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