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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

#401

Post by StefanBatory »

fennecfoxy wrote: post #367
alwa wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it a little strange, though, that the system notionally decided that the families are owed an enormous amount of economic power as compensation for the nasty behavior of Alex Jones' media company, but at the same time it's obliging them not to use that economic power to prevent the sale of the media company to a "new owner" still affiliated with an unrepentant Alex Jones, who will undoubtedly continue the nasty…

Nah it's just typical rich people getting away with everything stuff & we'll continue to let it happen because we are hapless.

It does really appear that America's getting her own, homegrown oligarchs.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#402

Post by jason-phillips »

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.…

> What recourse is left when the legal system is this broken?

Exactly. The lawfare must stop.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#403

Post by fenomas »

impossiblefork wrote: post #352
fenomas wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't a billion dollars for a single thing, it was awards to 15 different defendants, ranging from ~30-120 million each. More importantly, you're missing that this was a default judgment - Jones didn't defend himself, so the award is kind of the theoretical maximum. The results aren't comparable to regular court cases where both sides make their case.

Yes, but it's still the value of a whole town. A legal system must be robust even to weird or peculiar people who refuse to work with its rules and still produce reasonable results.

Nonsense - a legal system must apply the law. Also, Jones wasn't "weird or peculiar" - he repeatedly disobeyed and misled the court.

This is like a soccer match where one team won by fifty goals, because the other team repeatedly committed fouls and then left the pitch, and you're arguing that the referee should disallow some of the goals because you feel in your gut that fifty is too many.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#404

Post by giancarlostoro »

hbn wrote: post #188

Jones seems like a nut, but the way he's being taken to the cleaners and sued for comical amounts of money are just absurd. I'm not being hyperbolic saying people would be less mad at him if he had done the shooting himself. And it's especially rich in a time where the most popular podcast genre is women commenting on brutal murder cases as they're fresh and being investigated, and throwing out their pet theories abo…

Nancy Grace comes to mind, who has far more reach being on national television. She made claims about people who were later found to be guilty. Her speculation pushed harassment.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#405

Post by pclmulqdq »

trollbridge wrote: post #216
amalcon wrote: post #170

I am just some guy who doesn't actually know much about this. This being the internet, though: If I understand, it's pretty routine in real estate foreclosures for a creditor to win the auction simply by bidding the outstanding value of the debt. Thus not needing to actually come up with much or any cash. This gains the ability to use or resell the property however you want. How is one situation different from the ot…

Bankruptcy runs by different rules than foreclosures (which is why people about to be foreclosed on often file bankruptcy). Specifically, junior creditors are protected, and everyone gets a proportionate share of the proceeds. In a foreclosure, the senior lienholder usually gets the property and the junior lienholders either get nothing or get what’s left over after the senior creditor gets whatever they were owed. I…

> I’m really not sure why the creditors in this case did a shady no bid deal… it seems they would have had an easy time buying out the junior creditors and then getting whatever they want, although I’m also not sure why anyone would want the “infowars.com” domain and a warehouse full of vitamin pills.

The creditors with smaller claims hate the guts of the creditors with bigger claims, and likely wouldn't sell for any amount of money. Also, I am not sure whose claims have been decided to be senior to other claims (seniority of claims has little to do with monetary amount). Not all types of debt are equal.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#406

Post by rbanffy »

Muromec wrote: post #399
rbanffy wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some societies in the past would suggest indentured servitude. In this case, I'd find it rather amusing.

Yeah, but nobody ever argues conservative values when adhering to those gives a disadvantage to the one arguing. Proper conservative argument should make my life easier and predictable at the expense of other.

Exactly. On the same vein, it's only legal if it benefits them (“Finally, a judge followed the law.”), otherwise it's illegal persecution trying to silence his free speech.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#407

Post by hypeatei »

tonygiorgio wrote: post #391
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.…

[flagged]

> Instead we have people crying that free speech is the actual evil crime here.

Is this a satire comment? I hope so or else you need to do some reading on what "free speech" actually means. It doesn't let you defame someone, for example, by telling them they were crisis actors in a mass killing of school children.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#408

Post by sidewndr46 »

rtkwe wrote: post #333
HWR_14 wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't see what emotions have to do with it. If a business has a claim for $28 million in debt against a bankrupt company with near zero cash, I could easily see them saying "we'll bid the full $28 million for the asset X". Presumably the asset X has some non-zero value. Even if comically low (like a single small office building), collecting the value of that asset is much better than $0.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#409

Post by whimsicalism »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #378
whimsicalism wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

i agree that if we are doing first price it is suboptimal auction

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#410

Post by rbanffy »

BadHumans wrote: post #299
ajb wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Elon is going to be the highest bidder if they run the process again.

Maybe Alex Jones will also get a nice contract to sell his vitamins to the US armed forces.
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