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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

#371

Post by jillyboel »

rtkwe wrote: post #294
a12k wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The creditors agreed to and supported the Global Tetrahedron plan to purchase Infowars and settle the bankruptcy. Seems like the judge is overstepping given Delaware law on this matter.

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…

Why does the judge care about maximizing the value for a convicted criminal?

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#372

Post by a12k »

dragonwriter wrote: post #366
a12k wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They typically file in the United States Court for the District of Delaware, a federal court located in Delaware. Delaware law plays a significant part in these cases even though they’re in Fed court. Corporate charters, filings, fiduciary duties, property rights, choice of laws, etc etc etc are all determined by Delaware law and used in the federal court. Federal Bankruptcy Law provides the procedural framework. So,…

> Federal Bankruptcy Law provides the procedural framework. Federal bankruptcy law sets the substantive as well as procedural rules for bankruptcy, and its substantive provisions trump any state law, but, OTOH, state law has some role both in determining what the set of claims going in to bankruptcy are and, to the extent permitted in federal bankruptcy law, setting things like allowable personal exemptions, etc.

Yep! This is all correct. The point remains, however, that Delaware law does have a substantial amount to do with bankruptcy proceedings in Delaware, which is really the point I was responding to.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#373

Post by JumpCrisscross »

rtkwe wrote: post #356
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Did the judge argue against the single round or the sealed price? Criticising sealed bids is nonsense. The gold-standard auction (Vickrey, or more accurately, VCG) features sealed bids. If the judge is criticising sealed bids at all , The Onion should app…

The exact form of the auction is really really important though. A Vickery auction is single round and sealed but is critically a second price auction so bidder are incentivized to bid their maximum because they will get the second price which wasn't the case in this auction. Without the second price you're trying to bid just enough to outbid the other party/parties which won't maximize bid size. > Isn't it also mean…

> exact form of the auction is really really important though

Sure. But nobody uses Vickrey because it's impossible to explain to the public why the highest bid wasn't accepted.

> Without the second price you're trying to bid just enough to outbid the other party/parties which won't maximize bid size

Which is exactly what happens in any single-round first-price format. The only thing an open auction does is facilitate collusion. Let me repeat: for a single-round first-price auction, sealed bids are the only way to go.

> that money may technically come legally from outside the estate

It may but it doesn't. Jones saying the judge "ruled in our favour" (emphasis mine) sort of gives away the game.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#375

Post by patrickhogan1 »

A bankruptcy trustee was involved during the whole process (3rd party neutral). While the goal of increasing money to creditors here may work due to the free publicity, it harms the creditors interests who already agreed to the settlement. So you have a third party neutral trustee and the creditors who were harmed agreeing.

With that said bankruptcy judges do reject plans quite often and this is a high profile case.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#376

Post by dralley »

nemo44x wrote: post #318
gklitz wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Incitement means means explicitly encouraging. He was literally, as in literally, comparing the families of the victims to Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. I don’t know about you, but if someone has been screaming at me for years that I need to be ready for armed conflict with “the enemy” and then points to someone screaming “that guy’s Hitler”, I would definitely take that as explicit encouragement. But obviously it’s…

[flagged]

[flagged]

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#377

Post by Sparkle-san »

netbioserror wrote: post #266
acdha wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jones continued to inflict harm on families who’d lost children, and profited significantly from it both financially and politically. He defied multiple courts, too, so there was no question of premeditation or incapacity, just repeated decisions to cause harm year after year. That’s the difference: true crime podcasts don’t cause harm on that scale, and few people are going to defy the authority of the legal system…

[flagged]

How about having people threatening to rape and murder your family because they're convinced your lying and know where you live so you constantly have to move and try to hide your whereabouts.

https://apnews.com/article/shootings-school-connecticut-alex...

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#378

Post by JumpCrisscross »

whimsicalism wrote: post #354
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Did the judge argue against the single round or the sealed price? Criticising sealed bids is nonsense. The gold-standard auction (Vickrey, or more accurately, VCG) features sealed bids. If the judge is criticising sealed bids at all , The Onion should app…

multi-round or not, they should still be equivalent in expected revenue to VCG - no?

> multi-round or not, they should still be equivalent in expected revenue to VCG - no

VCG is second price, so we're already in a sub-optimal regime with a first-price format. (All while illustrating why Vickrey auctions don't work with unsophisictated observers. Could you imagine the shitshow if The Onion won and then didn't have to pay their bid, but Jones's?)

Given first price, I don't think the number of rounds is revenue equivalent.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#379

Post by rbanffy »

jasonjayr wrote: post #144
wakawaka28 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

What he did was beyond mere defamation. It was heinous, it was blatant and deliberate dishonesty, and targeted vulnerable victims. Repeating the verifiable lie that the Sandy Hook incident did not happen, and promoting violence against the surviving families, despite repeated opportunities to stop without penalty, is beyond forgivable. And this penalty is because he declined to defend this behavior. Remember, it's a…

> Him losing his "intellectual property", but not his voice, is getting off lightly.

Indeed. This should be a matter of criminal charges. Jones should be in jail.

OTOH, he would, of course, be pardoned in a couple months.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#380

Post by chollida1 »

ajb wrote: post #206
jmward01 wrote: post #42

It is clear that Jones and his relatives have moved money and assets around in order to shield them from the verdict. Now, money that should have been already given to the victims is being used to steal back the megaphone that caused harmed in the first place. The end effect will probably be even more subscribers and money for Jones which he will use with even less restraint since he knows there are no consequences.…

That's not what this judgement says. It actually says the sale did not generate enough money for the creditors and the process should be run again. I think the Judge maybe naive in thinking that re-running an auction will generate more money (normally it will generate less, as the losing bidders will drop out) but he did not agree with Jones' claims.

> I think the Judge maybe naive in thinking that re-running an auction will generate more money (normally it will generate less, as the losing bidders will drop out) but he did not agree with Jones' claims.

What evidence are you basing this on?

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