He was defaulted because he and his lawyers chose not to participate in the civil legal process.
As for "wrong words" if you watched, it was not just a few "wrong words" it was YEARS of vilifying the sandyhook parents. It was hiring "reporters" to go harass them. It was sending someone on a mission to disrupt a fun run.
And further, because it brought in customers, he ignored anything that countered the narrative of "sandyhook was fake" Even as recently as last week he was calling sandyhook staged.
He then went on to lie, repeatedly, in court and deposition (which was shown multiple times).
But finally, free speech does not mean "I can say whatever I want whenever I want". Libel and slander have been a part of the civil code since literally the foundation of the country. Lie, knowingly, in a way that harms people, and you'll pay a price. It was WELL demonstrated that Jones and his crew knew they were lying but continued anyways.
How did it do that?
It's not as if he drove by the homes of these people and yelled expletives.
It goes into great detail the impact that Jones' slander had on the Sandy Hook families.
The common law has been developing for hundreds of years. It is an extraordinary institution and an important part of Western traditions.
At its best, the common law has allowed a finely balanced rule to develop - not in a vacuum, but incrementally and iteratively proven in thousands of real-world cases.
Some of the best minds of our civilizations have tussled over these guidelines, and the more lawsuits that have occurred, the better-developed that area of law, in general.
The United States' approach to the common law of libel and defamation has been strongly shaped by the First Amendment - and that Amendment was not nearly as strong a century ago, remember. It has been accorded more respect and power over time, and that is a wonderful thing.
All of this to say: you're ignoring the entire edifice of law concerning free speech, libel, and defamation. The balance of free speech vs libel and defamation is a defining feature of the success of our society, not its failure.
anglo traditions
Lots of (western) countries doesn't have anything comparable
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.
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Lies, traditionally speaking, have NEVER been covered by the 1st Amendment. I dunno why we stopped punishing them as a society. But its a good thing that we're remembering about them today.
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.
IIRC, only for public figures.
The bar is far lower for private figures btw. A lot of libel/slander that would pass for public figures (ie: Politicians) are absolutely illegal and would be charged if levied against private figures instead (such as me, or the Sandy Hook victims)
> 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.
Hmm... I think the bigger issue here is whether the suit would be enough reputational damage to even get to damages. IIRC, there's minimum amounts of damage done before any suit is even considered (me lawyering up would cost more than the reputational damage in that case, so it just wouldn't be worth it).
The bar is set at a certain level of damages that I expect to get awarded (and courts also reject any case where the damages are too low). This is more due to pragmatism / the innate inefficiencies of court cases that make it less likely for all cases to be considered... rather than what is strictly legal or illegal.
IE: Even if we were to make it easier to sue for smaller amounts of reputational damage, no one would do it because of the high costs of lawyers in general (and high costs of a full court case).
Harm is required in _most_ defamation. Some claims are considered "defamation per se", in which they are considered automatically harmful.
- Indications that a person was involved in criminal
- Indications that a person had a "loathsome," contagious or infectious
- Indications that a person was unchaste or engaged in sexual misconduct
- Indications that a person was involved in behavior incompatible with the proper conduct of his business, trade or profession
https://www.findlaw.com/injury/torts-and-personal-injuries/w...
At any rate: per se defamation isn't at play in this case.
Oftentimes, the outcome isn't about winning in court. It's about the restitution of the potential harm.
I am continuing to assert you're just wrong. I'm not a lawyer btw.
(A distinctive feature of modern libel law is SLAPP, which permits fee recovery for defamation suits that aren't well-founded, but that works against the I argument I think but am not sure you are trying to make.)
For others' curiosity: A SLAPP is Strategic lawsuit against public participation, a strategy for plaintiffs to silence opponents by way of burdening them with an onslaught of lawsuits and hoping they are scared away by potential legal costs of mounting a defense thereby resulting in them just giving up. The potential for this strategy to have chilling effects gave rise to anti-SLAPP laws.
I’d love a world where we continue to get Make No Law episodes, but I’d given up hope after it going dormant for a while.
I don’t think this is the most efficient way to carve out time for podcasts :D
I’m saying that the suit wouldn’t end with a settlement or an apology or me doing anything; it would be thrown out for not meeting the standard for defamation. Tort is relatively boring, IMO, but the standards for various suits are well defined and publicly documented.
Beyond that, you can lie your head off. Jones has been lying for decades. This is the first time that it was so egregious that somebody managed to drag it across the finish line for a civil judgment.
> knew that it was false
Wrong. The bar for negligence is "should have performed X, but failed to do so".
Ex: A toddler dying by falling off a deck is negligence. The homeowner "should have repaired the deck", but failed to do so. (This bar would lead to negligent homicide or manslaughter, depending on jurisdiction).
Similarly, a journalist "should have done basic research", but failed to do so, is negligence. Its a much easier bar than "malice" (ie: knew it was false, but lied anyway).
But LII at least suggests that the law as written, is about negligence: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/defamation
EDIT: According to LII on libel: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/libel, there seems to be different awards for negligence, recklessness, and malice. Negligence is capped at actual injury, while recklessness and above can have punitive damages.
EDIT: Alex Jones's $965M penalty here is likely punitive? (I don't know for sure), which suggests that it was at least of the reckless level and proven so in court?
(2) If we're talking about the "actual malice" standard, then the standard is recklessness, not negligence.
(3) None of that matters here, because Jones lost the trial by default (the evidence would have clearly shown Jones to have met the actual malice standard, but it's a moot point).
> (2) If we're talking about the "actual malice" standard, then the standard is recklessness, not negligence.
My understanding is that "actual malice" only applies to public figures. Not private figures?
EDIT: I should note that I'm working off of roughly high-school journalism + high school law levels of analysis here. I recognize I'm no expert in this subject, but we were forced to study this topic in my Journalism class before we were allowed to publish the school newspaper. I can believe it if my teacher was being extra-conservative with regards to the subjects we were allowed to cover.
I haven't followed the full details of this case specifically. And it seems like there's multiple different cases of defamation vs Alex Jones for Sandy Hook... and my own memories could be getting mixed up between them.
Good to discuss these various details in any case. Reckless vs negligence (and other such details) are very important to understand the case.
It's a highly subtle right that does not mean what most people think it means. Trying to apply it in this case won't bring any value to your argument.
Also, the law itself is actually quite weak for very obvious 1st Amendment reasons. It has built-in exceptions designed to keep it from becoming a censorship tool. However, the context in which that law exists has made the exceptions wide enough to drive trucks through.
You see, CDA 230 alone would not have dynamited the foundations of libel or slander law. Back then, the entities shielded by these safe harbors were supposed to just be web hosting providers. But technology moves on, and now we have Facebook and Twitter, which act almost identically to broadcasters except without the liability. And since they've pushed everyone to make everything public, that makes everyone a public figure[1].
If you are a public figure, it is harder to be defamed. This should be obvious, if I say Donald Trump has a narcissism problem or just mis-state the size of his wealth I should not have to defend a multi-million dollar lawsuit from him[2]. However, if I, say, get defamed by someone and respond to them on Twitter, that makes me a public figure now - which means the bar is also raised for me as a plaintiff. This is how Elon Musk got away with calling one of the Thai cave rescue divers a pedophile, for example.
[0] DMCA 512 does the same with contributory copyright liability, though with the extra step of having to give anyone with a registered copyright total censorship powers over your platform in order to get the liability exception.
[1] Technically this is a "limited-purpose public figure", which basically means "you aren't a public figure, but you stuck your nose in the debate, so for this particular time we're going to act as if you were one".
[2] Not like it stopped him - the US court system has very few ways to stop a baseless suit before it is filed.
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.
This is an incredibly disingenuous take on Jones' actions here.
Edit: For additional context, OP has a history of direct ties to conspiracy theories, Project Veritas, etc.. See: their profile.
Put this depressing fact together with a highly networked communications infrastructure, and you can see there's a big economic incentive to talk shit about others. The US has an entire media sector built around the opinion columnists and radio/TV hosts whose whole brand is aggressive belittlement of others, or bullying as entertainment.
The fact that in spite of all those assume-no-malice protections for a defendant this lawsuit still found him guilty says a lot about this case specifically, and very little about the risks of merely "saying the wrong thing" (at least under a US legal framework).
Weirdly, it actually doesn't. The court awarded the plaintiff's default judgement on the claims of defamation because Jones refused to hand over a bunch of evidence during discovery. Given the particulars of the case, he'd probably have lost anyway, and in some ways it's even worse that he felt it more important to hide his financials from the court and plaintiffs than to actually attempt to defend himself.
I guess this still does make your point even stronger though: the reason we're here, despite the malice protections, is that Jones didn't even try to defend himself.
Oh please, Jones is no way a victim. Your idea of a successful society is one that richly rewards wilful dishonesty - not the kind intended to amuse or entertain, like fiction or the tall tales shared by Art Bell, but by deliberately ruining other people's lives.
Most people would probably say that this sort of behavior should not be only not be tolerated by a civil society, but that there should be penalties for it. You, on the other hand, have decided that being sued for libel is a totalitarian death wish.
"Free speech" has never been limitless. Fraud, libel, filing a false report, uttering threats, copyright infringement -- all grounds for a lawsuit if not a prison term in any respectable country.
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.