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Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#181

Post by pessimizer »

ivraatiems wrote: post #4

This is great news, but we should temper our expectations: It's likely that Jones will appeal and keep this tied up for years before he has to pay anything. Even if he is eventually obligated to pay some amount, it is unlikely to be what the jury just decided. And even if it is what the jury just decided, Jones' company is already "bankrupt" (yet still on the air) and he will almost certainly avoid liability through…

> In sum, it's good to know that we're trying to hold him to account, but it seems unlikely that this stops him in any material way from just continuing on the way he has been.

It depends on if your goal in a trial about the horrible damages done to the parents of murdered children was only to compensate in some way those suffering parents for that defamation. If your goal was to attack Alex Jones because you don't like him (you're an anti-fan) and you don't like people who like him, then this will be disappointing. Really anything other than summary execution would be disappointing.

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#182

Post by salt-thrower »

GamerUncle wrote: post #46

This is more than the amount that people that lied about WDM's in the middle East were ever fined with. Consider they killed millions. Please know that I am not siding with Jones but this is ludicrous.

This is a fair judgement against Jones. A fair judgement against the people who lied about WMD's and killed millions via the war in Iraq would be life in prison, for a start.

Just because the criminals at the top get away with war crimes doesn't mean the criminals lower on the totem pole shouldn't be punished. It's a false equivalence to claim otherwise.

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#183

Post by ferrumfist »

zackees wrote: post #24
ivraatiems wrote: post #4

This is great news, but we should temper our expectations: It's likely that Jones will appeal and keep this tied up for years before he has to pay anything. Even if he is eventually obligated to pay some amount, it is unlikely to be what the jury just decided. And even if it is what the jury just decided, Jones' company is already "bankrupt" (yet still on the air) and he will almost certainly avoid liability through…

Quoted post unavailable.

> Say the wrong words and get financially destroyed

I would argue that a failed society is one that protects an individual at the cost of the group. You only see one individual held accountable for his words and actions, but you don't make any attempt to recognize the families and how their lives have been affected by Alex Jones' negligent and irresponsible words.

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#184

Post by tptacek »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #129
robswc wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If those were the reasonable standards, every media-company would be broke. I'd argue traditional media reaches many more people and the impact of intentional lies is that much greater.

> every media-company would be broke Media is constantly being sued for defamation. The difficult part is showing they had evidence they were lying. That was overwhelming in these cases, which is what makes them unique.

Morever, any serious media company in the world when faced with a suit like this would have lawyered up and diligently participated in their defense during the trial. Jones did the opposite: he and his counsel clownishly attempted to boycott the trial, despite repeated and escalating warnings from the judge, and ended up losing by default, which is an almost unprecedented outcome. Most companies don't respond to lawsuits by daring the state to demonstrate the rule of law.

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#185

Post by lovich »

zackees wrote: post #24
ivraatiems wrote: post #4

This is great news, but we should temper our expectations: It's likely that Jones will appeal and keep this tied up for years before he has to pay anything. Even if he is eventually obligated to pay some amount, it is unlikely to be what the jury just decided. And even if it is what the jury just decided, Jones' company is already "bankrupt" (yet still on the air) and he will almost certainly avoid liability through…

Quoted post unavailable.

Your speech has power. That’s why we carve out free speech protections from the government so you always have some measure of power against it. That power also means it can be used to damage others.

Being made to pay for damages you caused via speech is not censorship in the same way that being made to pay for damages you caused via fire is not censorship.

If you want to argue that it doesn’t have the power to damage, then who cares if it is censored. If you want to argue that you should be allowed to damage others with impunity and no consequences you’ll find most of humanity turning against you.

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#187

Post by nobody9999 »

wara23arish wrote: post #96
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just "saying something is a hoax". It's deliberately lying, for years, for his own profit, in a way that caused significant amounts of damage to the people he was lying about. Should that be free from consequences? No. No, it should not be. And, since there was profit from the lying, shouldn't the damages be greater than the profit from the lies? Yes. Yes, it should be.

are we holding all news to the same account regarding deliberate lying for profit? i hate double standards

> are we holding all news to the same account regarding deliberate lying for profit?

>i hate double standards

Aren't we? Please provide examples of actual defamation (i.e., lies that were known to be lies, that caused damage to the subject of those lies) that haven't been the subject of legal proceedings?

Edit: Changed "libel" to "defamation" to be more inclusive as to give you more opportunity to provide examples.

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#188

Post by akerl_ »

dragontamer wrote: post #93
zackees wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

You couldn't lie in the 1970s or 1980s. If you did, you would be sued for libel or slander (depending on how exactly you lied). In the 90s, 00s, and 10s, we somehow forgot about libel / slander laws. I'm happy to see that something as egregious as Alex's Jones's lies here are finally getting punished, but I'd like to see more protection from libel/slander in modern 2020s era America. ------ Lies, traditionally speaki…

At risk of being pedantic, the bar for defamation is considerably higher than “lying”. Very relevantly for cases like this, the plaintiffs were required to show that the false statements caused them harm, where the easiest kind of harm is financial harm (like losing your job because of the lie).

Notably, I can put up a billboard in my town that says “All of dragontamer’s code is buggy and it makes your computer smell bad”, and we’d be a long way off from you successfully suing me for defamation.

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#189

Post by JumpCrisscross »

wara23arish wrote: post #174
techsupporter wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of them have been (for example: https://www.mcall.com/hc-sandy-hook-denier-harrassment-0225-... ) but the main problem is that it is, as most of us posting here know, difficult to track down the individuals directly performing the harassment. Alex Jones is directly inciting people to go harass the plaintiffs so he bears liability for his actions.

did he really say go harass these people or did he just say they’re crisis actors and its hoax? Im genuinely asking because i don’t understand how this works. I was under the impression that saying “Trump is a murderous liar” is fine, if I say “Go kill trump”etc then thats incitement. Does that make sense?

> was under the impression that saying “Trump is a murderous liar” is fine, if I say “Go kill trump”etc then that's incitement

If Alex Jones said "go kill these families," he'd likely be facing criminal charges. Instead, he made up specific claims which he kept repeating even after being shown evidence a reasonable person would accept as refutation of said claims.

To your analogy: if you said "Trump is a murderous liar who buggered my pet rabbit last Tuesday in New York," then were shown evidence Trump was in London and up to no buggery, and yet you kept saying it, yes, Trump might have a claim against you.

Re: Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

#190

Post by AlexandrB »

donatj wrote: post #119
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case there is demonstrable harm here. The Sandyhook parents have had their lives threatened and confronted by strangers both on the street and in their home due to Jone's words - the problem is there were a lot of unreasonable people who very much believed Jones and while you claim you would, you wouldn't just shrug this off. His accusations made their lives unsafe by sullying their reputation with irrational…

I don't think holding a person accountable for another person's irrational behaviour is reasonable though. If you tell me "it's going to rain" and I take that as a call to attack people with umbrellas, is that your fault?

Seems like the kind of thing a jury of your peers could decide. Kind of like what happened in this case.

It also bears mentioning that the gulf between "it's going to rain" and "the parents of murdered children are actually 'deep-state' actors aiding a conspiracy to take away your rights" is vast.

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