The ruling will allow the conspiracy theorist to continue broadcasting on Infowars, while the Sandy Hook families pursue payment of $1.4 billion in defamation damages.
It was supposed to shut him up. The money was a hill he was supposed to be buried under. There was no way on god’s green earth he was coming up with those funds, everything with his name attached should have perished but now he gets to keep spouting off.
This was never the intention of the court, and is rarely ever an outcome any court in the US would seek. The court only cares about paying a judgement. If the business needs to generate funds to make that payment towards the judgement then that’s what the court will decide is best for achieving that goal.
If we want to shut him up, we have to stop generating money for him. That means more than just not watching him, it also involves not talking about him so people stop picking him up out of curiosity. If he doesn’t gain new audience members, his current audience will literally and figuratively die off and his business will fold.
But that’s not in our nature is it. We will keep fanning his fire until it no longer warms us.
It was a defamation suit. Of course the goal is to shut him up and make him stop defaming his victims. The judgement is just the means to do that. Prioritizing the judgement over removing the tool he used to defame the aggrieved party is asinine.
It takes quite a lot to get a judgement which extends beyond just barring the person from speaking about the victim again, and taking away their tools to speak. Despite how horrible this dude is, it’s still not the kind of crime that causes the government to take silence him.
They’ll have recourse available if he talks about the same victims again, but they don’t have standing for shutting him up entirely.
Yes, I’m aware of the failings of the US civil court system and the fact they try to boil everything down to a dollar value instead of actually making the victim whole again.
Which, like most suits, seeks reparations for damages, particularly in civil cases, this is going to be the entire point of the case.
Of course the goal is to shut him up
No lol, at least not explicitly. Everyone keeps saying this, but it has never been stated as a goal of the trials.
make him stop defaming his victims
In the normal world, punishing someone for causing damages usually teaches them to stop doing the thing, the “silencing” part is just a consequence of a judgement, because with a precedent in place the defendant could easily be charged and convicted again. If you become held liable for damages (which again, was the goal of this and most civil cases) and you continue to do the thing you’re charged with, you would have to be either utterly incompetent, or a celebrity who thinks you can ride on your fame and public profile enough to get around the law, and having your right to speak taken away from you in the US is a very rare thing.
Everyone is getting angry at the people explaining this, when the problem here is the fact that this is a celebrity case. Jones is not a normal person who gets punished for doing thing and thus stops doing thing for fear of being punished further, in this case he’s trying to make it worse for himself because that translates to ratings and money, but, that inflow of money is considered an income and many times courts will allow a defendant to continue to work to raise the funds for the judgement, but in all it’s a very grey area.
The wildest part here is that people explaining these facts are getting called sympathizers? I am baffled how immature the general public has become. Just like how people who explain that Trump isn’t getting jail time are getting called “fascists,” this is a prime example of how everyone is spending too much time rotting their goddamn brains on the internet.
Laws and courts do not exist as ends in and of themselves. They’re tools created to serve a greater purpose, namely to discourage and stop bad behavior. If the tool is failing at its primary purpose, it deserves criticism.
Responding to criticisms about how the courts work with “but that’s how the courts work” is missing the point.
Lawsuits don’t “shut people up”. You can stop someone from defaming you, but you can’t sue to end a radio show. Usually sane people stop talking to stop digging their hole deeper, but Alex Jones isn’t sane.
Lawsuits only assign monetary damages. That’s how they work.
It was supposed to shut him up. The money was a hill he was supposed to be buried under. There was no way on god’s green earth he was coming up with those funds, everything with his name attached should have perished but now he gets to keep spouting off.
They took away his ill-gotten loot but let him keep his gun.
This was never the intention of the court, and is rarely ever an outcome any court in the US would seek. The court only cares about paying a judgement. If the business needs to generate funds to make that payment towards the judgement then that’s what the court will decide is best for achieving that goal.
If we want to shut him up, we have to stop generating money for him. That means more than just not watching him, it also involves not talking about him so people stop picking him up out of curiosity. If he doesn’t gain new audience members, his current audience will literally and figuratively die off and his business will fold.
But that’s not in our nature is it. We will keep fanning his fire until it no longer warms us.
It was a defamation suit. Of course the goal is to shut him up and make him stop defaming his victims. The judgement is just the means to do that. Prioritizing the judgement over removing the tool he used to defame the aggrieved party is asinine.
It takes quite a lot to get a judgement which extends beyond just barring the person from speaking about the victim again, and taking away their tools to speak. Despite how horrible this dude is, it’s still not the kind of crime that causes the government to take silence him.
They’ll have recourse available if he talks about the same victims again, but they don’t have standing for shutting him up entirely.
Yes, I’m aware of the failings of the US civil court system and the fact they try to boil everything down to a dollar value instead of actually making the victim whole again.
Which, like most suits, seeks reparations for damages, particularly in civil cases, this is going to be the entire point of the case.
No lol, at least not explicitly. Everyone keeps saying this, but it has never been stated as a goal of the trials.
In the normal world, punishing someone for causing damages usually teaches them to stop doing the thing, the “silencing” part is just a consequence of a judgement, because with a precedent in place the defendant could easily be charged and convicted again. If you become held liable for damages (which again, was the goal of this and most civil cases) and you continue to do the thing you’re charged with, you would have to be either utterly incompetent, or a celebrity who thinks you can ride on your fame and public profile enough to get around the law, and having your right to speak taken away from you in the US is a very rare thing.
Everyone is getting angry at the people explaining this, when the problem here is the fact that this is a celebrity case. Jones is not a normal person who gets punished for doing thing and thus stops doing thing for fear of being punished further, in this case he’s trying to make it worse for himself because that translates to ratings and money, but, that inflow of money is considered an income and many times courts will allow a defendant to continue to work to raise the funds for the judgement, but in all it’s a very grey area.
The wildest part here is that people explaining these facts are getting called sympathizers? I am baffled how immature the general public has become. Just like how people who explain that Trump isn’t getting jail time are getting called “fascists,” this is a prime example of how everyone is spending too much time rotting their goddamn brains on the internet.
Laws and courts do not exist as ends in and of themselves. They’re tools created to serve a greater purpose, namely to discourage and stop bad behavior. If the tool is failing at its primary purpose, it deserves criticism.
Responding to criticisms about how the courts work with “but that’s how the courts work” is missing the point.
Courts rarely impose “prior restraint” on speech, aka shut people up. Their goal is to make people pay for past wrongs, not to prevent future wrongs.
Lawsuits don’t “shut people up”. You can stop someone from defaming you, but you can’t sue to end a radio show. Usually sane people stop talking to stop digging their hole deeper, but Alex Jones isn’t sane.
Lawsuits only assign monetary damages. That’s how they work.
The readership here seems even less nuanced and mature than reddit in many places.
Telling people facts they don’t like always, always ALWAYS amounts to being targeted as an advocate of said thing.
Yeah I quoted a Wikipedia article looking for opinions and got hella downvoted.
That’s how they work so that’s what they used to try to shut him up for good.