Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones is seeking to protect his personal social media accounts from being sold in the upcoming auction of his Infowars media platform to pay more than $1 billion he owes relatives of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, claiming selling those accounts would violate his privacy and deny him a chance to make a fresh start after bankruptcy.
The trustee overseeing the liquidation and selloff of the assets of Infowars and its parent company Free Speech Systems, asked a federal judge on Friday to include the social media accounts as part of the auctions scheduled for November and December. The judge delayed a decision on the matter for at least a week.
Jones’ lawyers argue the personal media accounts that use his real name are not owned by Infowars or FSS, but are controlled by him personally, and should be considered part of his “persona” that cannot be owned by someone other than himself.
If you had a talk show called the [Your Name] show, should it be immune to bankruptcy courts? Should a the company [Your Name] Inc. not be allowed to be bought and sold? Should we forbid people from selling tshirts or pictures with their names and faces on them? Where do you think we should draw the line?
Most people don’t own a business. The occasional use of facebook marketplace doesn’t make a personal account part of a nonexistant business.
That’s a fair point. It seems rather awkward. Selling off the assets of said talk show, easy decision. Selling the brand, though, if it’s tied to your person / personal name, that seems dubious. Especially against the named person’s will.
For something like t-shirt likenesses, I suppose I think the line is the person’s consent. I can sell permission for my face to be on your t-shirt, but being forced to seems wrong. In the extreme case: a person is legally entitled to sell nude images of themselves, but surely a court would never order it, even if that person had been previously selling nude images.