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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

#661

Post by standardUser »

AustinDev wrote: post #497
probably_wrong wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's out of line with other defamation judgements. This point made me curious so I quickly looked around. Fox News paid a $787.5 million settlement [1] for making false claims about Dominion. Given that this happened as the trial was about to start, it's reasonable to assume that Fox News expected to lose even more if the issue went to trial. And that's for a party that arguably would have followed court orders, so…

All these cited claims seem political and extreme to me. I can't find a non-political example where the judgement this extreme. Depp v Herd defamation was around $10m.

The acts of defamation were extreme, clear cut, repetitive and devoid of remorse. I for one like knowing that if someone ruins my reputation with cruel lies in such a malicious and relentless way that they may face extreme consequences.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#662

Post by 0x457 »

busterarm wrote: post #387
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?

The same way that big media organizations get away with this in court. "This content is entertainment and there's no way that any reasonable person could construe this information as facts." If MSNBC, CNN and Fox News can get away with this argument every time they are sued, I don't see how InfoWars doesn't. But then again, court cases aren't about facts or truth.

> But then again, court cases aren't about facts or truth.

My sibling in Christ, Jones is paying because he fucked around with courts. He was told to stop by court, and he didn't. He had a chance to defend himself, and he passed on it.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#663

Post by archagon »

_zgx0 wrote: post #506

The amount of folks here supporting Alex Jones is completely shocking to me. He built a business out of attacking and re-victimizing parents whose children were murdered. He's scum of the earth. That business was taken away from him, and folks think that's too much? What the actual fuck.

Consciously or unconsciously, people begin with an unshakable feeling of “my tribe good,” then reverse engineer a justification for whatever issue is being politicized. Even if it involves defending a repugnant conman and slanderer like Jones.

It just goes to show that far too many people have no fundamental values, only political affiliations.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#664

Post by exac »

nativeit wrote: post #659
gms7777 wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: "Judge Lopez said that the bankruptcy auction failed to maximize the amount of money that the sale of Infowars should provide to Mr. Jones’s creditors, including the Sandy Hook families, in part because the bids were submitted in secret. “It seemed doomed almost from the moment they decided to go to a sealed bid,” Judge Lopez said. “Nobody knows what anybody else is bidding,” he added."

Wait, couldn’t this same argument be made in reverse? If the bids were open, the competing parties could simply go $1 above the highest offer, which suggest sealed bids are most appropriate to maximize the value. Auctions can’t be fairly judged in hindsight, generally speaking.

They could do an open run-off round of bids until they have two potential buyers, and then switch to secret ballot to get each party's highest bid I suppose?

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#665

Post by fzeroracer »

dnissley wrote: post #574
_zgx0 wrote: post #506

The amount of folks here supporting Alex Jones is completely shocking to me. He built a business out of attacking and re-victimizing parents whose children were murdered. He's scum of the earth. That business was taken away from him, and folks think that's too much? What the actual fuck.

To be clear I haven't seen a single comment that could be charitably characterized as "supporting Alex Jones". I see a lot of comments that are pointing out that the judgment against him seems unreasonable given the damage he did to these families.

The people pointing out that the judgment is 'unreasonable' are either intentionally lying or extremely ignorant.

The context is that the judge awarded a default judgment because Alex Jones literally refused to participate in the legal system. He committed overt perjury (and was outright caught on this) and proceeded to just stop complying entirely.

If any of us received a court summons and refused to show up or defend ourselves the court isn't going to shrug and say the case goes away. In a system of law you can't just ignore the law and expect the judge to take pity on you.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#666

Post by sidewndr46 »

dllthomas wrote: post #498
sidewndr46 wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that Global Tetrahedron would generate revenue from InfoWars is a farce. Jones is InfoWars. Any market value assigned to InfoWars without Jones explicitly involvement is a farce. Even a non bankruptcy sale of InfoWars would require him to participate in the business for an extended period of time. Even then, it'd just be some investor bankrolling Jones.

That seems true for any attempt to continue using the IP for the same thing. Turning it into a parody of that thing might have an audience (and therefore produce ad revenue), would not seem to need Jones involved, and be something for which Global Tetrahedron seems well resourced.

I thought that too, but Global Tetrahedron could just found 'InfooWars' as a satire site without Jones estate involvement at all.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#667

Post by jdiff »

User23 wrote: post #648
roenxi wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While that is terrible, I don't know if you can argue it is terrible to the tune of what they've done to Jones. Every major media outlet has some instances of, effectively, targeted harassment in their history. Whether the public endorses that harassment is more a question of how effective the reporters are than anything else. It makes sense that Jones would lose the case, but the scale of the judgements was eye wate…

My understanding is he didn't lose the case on the merits. During discovery he was required to hand over documents from his Google account, but Google had locked his account and he couldn't get access. The judge then ruled he was in default for failing to produce. This is obviously a massive abuse of the justice system, violating the maxim that the law does not compel the impossible. But, since the prevailing opinion…

This is not at all what happened. I can't speak to his Google account, but Jones failed to produce text messages from his phone referencing Sandy Hook, claiming they didn't exist. Then his lawyers mistakenly sent a copy of the entire contents of his phone to the prosecution, showing that the text messages did in fact exist, and would have been found for a simple keyword search for "Sandy Hook," demonstrating that they were trying to conceal these messages from the court.

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#668

Post by [deleted] »

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #58
ipaddr wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a debt judgement not economic power. They can sell that debit judgement to a company who collects. They can take the money from the result of the court process and try to buy infowars after this is all over. They don't have a judgement of ownership in infowars they have a debt and the court is forcing Alex to sell all assets to cover the debt. Then the rest is written off and he gets a black mark on his cre…

> They don't have a judgement of ownership in infowars they have a debt and the court is forcing Alex to sell all assets to cover the debt. It's a chapter 7 bankruptcy, the bankruptcy estate already owns the infowars assets. > There are rules around this process for a reason. If you allowed someone who has a debt judgement to just take over a company what is it's true value. Alex could try to value infowars at a tril…

[deleted]

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#669

Post by akira2501 »

wyldfire wrote: post #147
akira2501 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> This is dangerously close to making the penalty the loss of his first amendment rights. They'll never be able to stop him from creating "The Alex Jones Off the Deep End Show" where he thrills listeners with zany tales of conspiracies that can only be held at bay with these brand new supplements. He just has to forfeit Infowars and its assets.

> They'll never be able to stop him from creating "The Alex Jones Off the Deep End Show" where he thrills listeners with zany tales of conspiracies that can only be held at bay with these brand new supplements

So you're unable to think about this problem without putting your bias at the forefront?

> He just has to forfeit Infowars and its assets.

Actually, with this ruling, he does not. Roger Stone's group will get a legitimate change to purchase it to keep it under Jones' control. If you think that's a miscarriage of justice, as the OP does, can you explain why?

Why is forfeiture of his platform a necessity in your eyes?

Re: Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion

#670

Post by akira2501 »

cess11 wrote: post #65
akira2501 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Bankruptcy is not a punishment, neither is having to pay damages. His business wasn't about the exercise of first amendment rights, it was about selling supplements and whatnot.

Default judgments are a punishment.

Your right to sell things derives from the first amendment.

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