Alex Jones, scumbag

[cherrypoptart]

"He had plenty of opportunities to shut up and stop being a scumbag."

I don't see the relevance.

If it's protected speech under the First Amendment then why would he have to shut up?

If it's not protected speech under the First Amendment and his is guilty of a crime either under civil law or criminal law then why does it matter if he shuts up?

He still said what he said so if that was illegal then not saying it anymore doesn't make it any less illegal the very first time he said it.

As to the difference between criminal law and civil law, yes I do conflate them and apparently saying something is illegal under civil law isn't the way lawyers like to phrase it and they'd say something like... well I don't know how they'd put it but some suggestions I've seen are they might say it's tortious or unlawful. Is it possible to be sued under civil law for something that is clearly legal, unambiguously, legal to do? Like everyone agrees it's perfectly legal to do this, you clearly broke no laws at all, but you're getting sued anyway and the court goes along with it?

If that's not possible then using the word illegal seems justified both for civil law and criminal law. Either way you're accused of breaking the law and that means what you did would be illegal.

[Tom]

The First Amendment does not in fact guarantee your right to defame someone. Full stop.

[NobleHunter]

As Tom said, defamation is not protected speech, but shutting up when someone tells you your words are causing harm is probably a good defence against a law suit.

Do you think people should be able to tell harmful lies about someone without the victim having any recourse?

[msquared]

Of course they do, just look at the election claims.  If Jones can be found liable, so can Fox and OAN and all other people who spread election lies and made money off it.

[cherrypoptart]

That's exactly it.

If Jones is liable then so are thousands or millions or even tens of millions of other people for all kinds of conspiracy theories in which the crux of it relies on disparaging the character of other people.

[msquared]

No they are not.

[Fenring]

The First Amendment does not in fact guarantee your right to defame someone. Full stop.

But the argument made just now was that Jones was defaming the plaintiffs because, being members of a smallish group, it would have been clear he meant them specifically even thought just referring to "Sandy Hook parents". So the idea that he was defaming "someone", as you put it, is through a simple and reasonable inference. I don't see what's different between that and saying the moon landing was faked and therefore the astronauts are lying, since it's very clear that group of astronauts was quite small. So is saying the moon landing was faking defaming Neil Armstrong? 

[cherrypoptart]

"No they are not."

How do you figure?

You just as much as said they were.

"If Jones can be found liable, so can Fox and OAN and all other people who spread election lies and made money off it."

You added made money off of it but that's irrelevant and no part of defamation.

Now if you cost someone money that's part of it, but making money off of it is nowhere in the criteria for defamation.

So take that part out of it and you've got tens of millions of people liable for spreading election lies, saying Sandy Hook is a hoax, and all manner of other conspiracy theories in which you are calling someone a liar.

[NobleHunter]

Dsiparaging non-specific groups of people (Jones might have called out individual parents). Sandy Hook Parents are a limited set of identifiable people. The Jews (sorry, I mean the "lizard people") are not.

As for people who receive specific attention from conspiracy theorists, you have to call them a liar not just imply they're a liar by contradicting them. Defamation is one of the "magic word" areas of the law. Say the right words and the most offensive of slanders are not statements of fact and therefore not defamation.

Harm is also important. Some dude on the internet calling a demolitions expert or a New York Fire Chief a liar isn't going to cause any measurable harm. By measurable, I mean the kind you can spend thousands and thousands in lawyer fees spelling out for the court.

This is not a legal reason but the Streisand effects means you should only sue people when you're absolutely sure more attention won't benefit them. Tens of millions of people simply aren't worth elevating with a very public and controversial lawsuit.

[cherrypoptart]

The record industry for a while considered it easy money. I knew of a lawyer who went around going after people in the military for copyright violations and he'd pick up a few hundred dollars easy money from each until the record industry backed off of the practice for reasons of optics, but that wouldn't apply when going after all the people it's easily provable committed defamation by pushing the Sandy Hook conspiracy theory or as was mentioned the election fraud hoax and that goes for both of them, the Russian collusion election fraud hoax as well as the massive voter fraud election fraud hoax. You could have one of the family members of the victims hire some lawyer who just goes around identifying anyone he can find who called the family members liars and crisis actors and get an easy judgement against them. It wouldn't even matter if they stopped saying it. I mean you could ask them to stop but just like with copyright infringement, you're still liable for what you already did even if you don't do it anymore.

And besides which, some people just like to stay on the right side of the law, or at least know when they are crossing it.

If saying that you believe that the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax perpetrated by the government and crisis actors is defamation then the American people deserve to know that so they can choose to stop saying it and better yet choose to never say it in the first place even if they believe it or understand that they legally liable in civil court for defamation just like everyone knows where the law stands on pirating music or movies. You may choose to do it or not but you know what the law is. We don't really know yet on the defamation issue when it comes to something like what Jones did and we should know.

[Tom]

So the idea that he was defaming "someone", as you put it, is through a simple and reasonable inference.

Jones named and showed video clips of specific people.

It should also be noted that in America, there is a higher bar when defaming a "public figure," on the grounds that they have knowingly sacrificed some of their privacy in attaining their position(s). If you falsely accuse Hillary Clinton of a crime, you are less likely to be found liable than if you accuse Joe Smith from down the street.

[cherrypoptart]

Here's a better case than the Jones one because this guy did actually get his day in court.

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/sandy-hook-victim-defamation-lawsuit-hoax-book-850006/

"LEONARD POZNER, FATHER of the Sandy Hook massacre’s youngest victim, has won a defamation lawsuit against the editors of a book that claims the 2012 shooting in Newtown, Connecticut never occurred.

Wisconsin’s Dane County Circuit Judge Frank Remington issued a summary judgment on Monday against James Fetzer and Mike Palecek, co-editors of Nobody Died at Sandy Hook. The 400-page book falsely claims that the shooting, which resulted in 27 deaths at the school (including 20 children), was a FEMA drill promoting gun control and that Pozner fabricated the death certificate of his six-year-old son, Noah. Fabricating death certificates is a a crime in the state of Connecticut.

The suit focused on the death certificate claim but also referenced theories Fetzer put forward on his blog, including the idea that Noah was not Pozner’s son. A redacted copy of the real death certificate was included with the lawsuit, and Pozner even requested the court appoint an independent expert to conduct a postmortem paternity test, proving his relation to Noah.

“If Mr. Fetzer wants to believe that Sandy Hook never happened and that we are all crisis actors, even that my son never existed, he has the right to be wrong,” Pozner told The Associated Press. “But he doesn’t have the right to broadcast those beliefs if they defame me or harass me. He doesn’t have the right to use my baby’s image or our name as a marketing ploy to raise donations or sell his products. He doesn’t have the right to convince others to hunt my family.”

...

"The book case is just one of Pozner’s numerous crusades against Sandy Hook hoaxers. He is currently involved in at least nine lawsuits, and with his advocacy group, HONR Network, he has helped urge corporations like YouTube and Facebook to remove false posts about the Newtown shooting."

----------------------------------------------------


Fetzer seems to have gone much further than Jones. I'm not particularly inclined to defend him, not even as the devil's advocate. But it says Pozner is going after numerous Sandy Hook non-believers.

It would be interesting to know where the line is between speech that is protected and where exactly it crosses into defamation territory.

[cherrypoptart]

The point though is that there should be a valid place in the world for conspiracy theories. Sometimes they can do a lot of good.

Hopefully this doesn't count as going Godwin here, but I just heard a piece on NPR this morning about Rudolf Vrba who sounded the alarm on what could have been considered a conspiracy theory at the time, something people didn't apparently know enough about, which is that the Jewish people who thought they were taking trains to be resettled were actually being sent to their death.

https://www.npr.org/podcasts/458929150/the-new-yorker-radio-hour

Now I understand the truth is always a defense against defamation and libel but... is it? And what if you can't prove it? What if you don't even know for sure yourself but you just have your suspicions? Does that mean you can't talk about it without going afoul of libel and defamation laws?

Why one might ask if the truth is always a solid defense is because you just look at the Lance Armstrong case.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/jan/22/uk-libel-laws-sunday-times-lance-armstrong

"Burden of proof forced newspaper into settling with cyclist when it felt its evidence, although strong, would not stand up to trial"

If he hadn't confessed then that might still stand. The truth didn't save them until he told it himself, unable to withstand the hypnotic truth extracting gaze of the beautiful brown eyed interview goddess Oprah Winfrey.

And then there's this guy on youtube with a plausible explanation for the Terra-Luna collapse, who was behind it, and why. I like his insight into it even if it ends up not being correct, even if he doesn't have the evidence, and even if he disparaged companies and individuals who could sue him for defamation. It should be understood that conspiracy theories are just that, theories. That's why they aren't call conspiracy facts. Long story short on that subject though, it was FTX and their trading partner Alameda. Whether it's actually true or not, all the ducks line up in a row to make it plausible. They had the money, the will, the lack of any morality, and the ability to pull a short sale attack of that magnitude and get away with it for a while at least until whatever it is they did afterward lost them too much money to cover and now they're busted in every possible way.

Sometimes the conspiracy theory is just the jumping off point. Without it, you don't even know you should be looking for anything at all. You aren't even asking questions so you're not going to get any answers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBK4iZmIjCQ

[Tom]

Since you clearly don't feel that judges and juries can be trusted to draw a sensible line in individual cases, where if anywhere would you draw an arbitrary line?

[cherrypoptart]

I'm still thinking about it so I'm not sure yet. Will probably be considering it for some time. And it may yet be that court cases give us a better idea in the future.

Somewhat separately but tangentially, as part of the Fetzer case, the father stated, "He doesn’t have the right to use my baby’s image or our name as a marketing ploy to raise donations or sell his products."

I do agree with people having the right to protect their image as the Elvis heirs are well known for protecting their rights to his image.

https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/intellectual-property/b/copyright-trademark-law-blog/posts/do-you-ever-dare-copy-elvis-presley-some-people-still-do-lawsuit-filed-against-distributor-of-elvis-video-free-download-complaint

“But he doesn’t have the right to broadcast those beliefs if they defame me or harass me. He doesn’t have the right to use my baby’s image or our name as a marketing ploy to raise donations or sell his products. He doesn’t have the right to convince others to hunt my family.”

As to the parts that bracketed it, "... or harass me... convince others to hunt my family..."

If that's the standard then Maxine Waters would seem to be in trouble. She literally told people to harass members of the Trump administration and it's not a far stretch to think that some people would take that to mean anyone publicly supporting him such as wearing a MAGA hat and we did see just such harassment too like with the kid at Whataburger assaulted for wearing his MAGA hat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzasHXV4Wjo

“Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up. And if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere. We’ve got to get the children connected to their parents,” Waters said at the Wilshire Federal Building, according to video of the event.

“We don’t know what damage has been done to these children. All that we know is they’re in cages. They’re in prisons. They’re in jails. I don’t care what they call it, that’s where they are and Mr. President, we will see you every day, every hour of the day, everywhere that we are to let you know you cannot get away with this,” she added.

Waters appeared on MSNBC later in the day to double down on her remarks, saying she has “no sympathy” for members of the Trump administration.

“The people are going to turn on them. They’re going to protest. They’re going to absolutely harass them until they decide that they’re going to tell the President, ‘No, I can’t hang with you.’

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/06/25/politics/maxine-waters-trump-officials/index.html

Even Nancy Pelosi called the remarks unacceptable.

"House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi referred to Waters’ comments as “unacceptable” but blamed Trump’s “daily lack of civility” for provoking responses such as that of Waters.

“In the crucial months ahead, we must strive to make America beautiful again. Trump’s daily lack of civility has provoked responses that are predictable but unacceptable. As we go forward, we must conduct elections in a way that achieves unity from sea to shining sea,” Pelosi tweeted, linking out to a story about the remarks."

Just unacceptable? Or not protected speech so as we see in the Jones case, deemed by many to actually be illegal?

If Jones is guilty then it's hard to see how a lot of other people aren't too including many Democrats.

[cherrypoptart]

Would the standards we are applying to Jones have made it illegal for people to talk publicly about the greatest conspiracy theory of all time? Obviously the German standards at the time made it illegal, but what about our own standards right now? And people are putting out similarly outlandish seeming conspiracy theories too like the microchips or nanotech or sterilizing drugs in the vaccines. That's accusing companies like Pfizer and its leadership of crimes against humanity. If enough crazy people took those claims seriously and started harassing individuals as happened in the Jones case, would promulgating those conspiracy theories result in liability or in some states and countries even criminal charges?

That's where I was going with the Rudolf Vrba story. His realistic hope wasn't even for the Jewish people to be able to beat the Germans. He just hoped he could scare and yes even panic enough of them so that instead of the Germans slaughtering them like lambs they would have to hunt them down more like deer. He would be accusing German officials, without evidence, of mass murder and genocide. Now after he escaped of course he had his first hand eyewitness account. But what about before he actually saw with his own eyes what was going on when it would have done even more good for people to wonder about getting on those trains? What about people with no evidence but only their conspiracy theory?

So that was the ultimate case of the government cover up. The only way to get the evidence that Vrba ended up getting was to go on the inside and at the point almost everyone who knew would be in no position to reveal it. There were months before that during which the only thing that might have saved millions of people was the conspiracy theory that those trains were sending them to death camps.

[Tom]

So you're on record as saying that you believe falsely accusing someone of rape should be criminal. Should there be a similar penalty for accusing someone of mass murder without proof -- and if so, how would you have protected Vrba from it?

[cherrypoptart]

Your logic is impeccable. It's a real quandary.

I suppose one part of it is the knowing. If you know it's false and you publicly accuse them anyway then that's defamation and should not be protected.

That's where the false accusation of rape comes in. If the accuser knows the accusation is false then it's not protected speech. What if the accuser thinks the accusation is real but they are mistaken?

I suppose that's why a big deal is made, rightfully so, about Jones apparently not privately believing what he was publicly saying and that's where the money comes in, showing his motive to purposefully and knowingly lie. I can see him going down in that case.

I'm not sure though about the timeline, if Jones stopped believing before he stopped making the accusations or if after he stopped believing he stopped talking about it and recanted.

But where does that leave the true believers?

That's a good question I'm not sure I have the answer to. A real head scratcher. I literally just scratched my head thinking about it.

[LetterRip]

cherry,

public accusations, even if you believe them, should still be defamation if that belief isn't based on evidence.  What if your local radio announcer decided that he sincerely believed someone was a pedophile, and began saying that regularly on his broadcasts?  The person thus accused will have their reputation ruined.  Making a statement accusing someone of something that damages their reputation without evidence supporting the accusation, is a reckless disregard for the truth, and thus is and should be defamatory and subject to legal remedy.

I think those who are engaging in such behavior for profit, should have a more serious burden of evidence.

[cherrypoptart]

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/dec/03/elon-musk-defamation-trial-begins-in-case-brought-by-british-diver

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/dec/03/elon-musk-defamation-trial-begins-in-case-brought-by-british-diver

"The unanimous verdict by a panel of five women and three men was returned after roughly 45 minutes of deliberation on the fourth day of Musk’s trial. Legal experts believe it was the first major defamation lawsuit brought by a private individual over remarks on Twitter to be decided by a jury.

The outcome was a triumph for Musk, whose mercurial behavior in a number of instances last year came under close scrutiny from federal regulators and shareholders of Tesla, his Silicon Valley-based electric car manufacturer.

The jury’s decision signals a higher legal threshold for challenging potentially libelous Twitter comments, said L. Lin Wood, the high-profile trial lawyer who led the legal team for the plaintiff, Vernon Unsworth.

“This verdict puts everyone’s reputation at risk,” Wood told reporters after the verdict was announced.

Other lawyers specializing in defamation agreed the verdict reflects how the freewheeling nature of social media has altered understandings of what distinguishes libel punishable in court from casual rhetoric and hyperbole protected as free speech.

Musk, 48, who had testified during the first two days of the trial in his own defense and returned to court on Friday to hear closing arguments, exited the courtroom after the verdict and said: “My faith in humanity is restored.”

‘TAKE IT ON THE CHIN’

Outside the courthouse, Unsworth, 64, said he was resigned to his defeat. “I accept the jury’s verdict, take it on the chin and get on with my life.”

---------------------------------------

But you never know. With a different jury maybe we would have gotten a unanimous decision the other way.

But how would it go if Musk stuck to his guns, said he isn't joking, said he has no proof but the guy is what he is anyway?

[NobleHunter]

cherry,

public accusations, even if you believe them, should still be defamation if that belief isn't based on evidence.  What if your local radio announcer decided that he sincerely believed someone was a pedophile, and began saying that regularly on his broadcasts?  The person thus accused will have their reputation ruined.  Making a statement accusing someone of something that damages their reputation without evidence supporting the accusation, is a reckless disregard for the truth, and thus is and should be defamatory and subject to legal remedy.

I think those who are engaging in such behavior for profit, should have a more serious burden of evidence.

That still poses a problem for conspiracy theorists because their ability to assess the quality of evidence is compromised. They aren't--or at least don't act like--reasonable people as the law usually assumes. Pizzagate is an excellent example. Historically, their views usually aren't widely disseminated or are too risible for anyone to act on. They've also tended to be hate speech which tends not to defame individuals. It's why the recent mainstreaming of conspiracy theories is so alarming.

[msquared]

Or flat earthers or young earthers.

[cherrypoptart]

Pizzagate was inaccurate in the details but is it just a coincidence that it went viral in 2016 and by 2019 Jeffrey Epstein is arrested on federal sex trafficking charges after federal prosecutors?

He got away with it at first too. Maybe the ramping up of public pressure had some results.

The broader accusations of pizzagate about the elites having a private underage sex trafficking operation eventually proved to be true.

[msquared]

Just ask Matt Gaetz.

[NobleHunter]

I had the impression Epstein was caught out more by #metoo.

The details of Pizzagate were too obviously absurd to influence anyone who engaged with it critically. I don't think you can give it credit for being true in theory when it was so wrong in practice.

[Grant]

The broader accusations of pizzagate about the elites having a private underage sex trafficking operation eventually proved to be true.

OO
---


The broader accusations of men being rapists eventually proved to be true. 

[Fenring]

I had the impression Epstein was caught out more by #metoo.

The details of Pizzagate were too obviously absurd to influence anyone who engaged with it critically. I don't think you can give it credit for being true in theory when it was so wrong in practice.

I'll be honest, I think the proper Pizzagate phenomenon was an outcropping of something real. I read reports that pedophiles really did use codewords in their work, and code symbols as well, with certain words corresponding to certain types of underage persons. I do actually believe that there are pedophile rings out there, and even among powerful people in the elite. Not only does Epstein's island stand as a very overt version of this (where celebrities and politicians were literally flown over plain to see, in order to offer them underage sex slaves), but if this was being done over the radar, what is going on under the radar? So I don't think the claim is bizarre at all that pizza symbology has been used to refer to criminal practices. The bizarre part came with the widespread idea that this was all going on in literal pizza parlors, downstairs or in the hidden dungeon or something, and that the pizza business was a front for sex trafficking. So it's sort of like a funhouse version of what was imo probably a very real thing. The absurdity of pizzagate is really only that a preposterous version of what might be a real thing takes peoples' attention away from the real thing. If I was being paranoid I might suppose that the actual pedophile ring is the party that was pushing the pizza parlor nonsense, to discredit the entire thing. That's a known tactic, by the way, not just some what-if fiction writing I'm coming up with as a potential crime novel plot.

The reason this is relevant is because if all you can do is sniff that something wrong is going on, you may get the details wrong (very wrong sometimes), but if the alternative is to say nothing, which is better? When you ask people about the sex abuse scandals in the Catholic Church, and hear all the (rightful) outrage about the cover-ups and the lack of accusations coming from within, you have the same situation LR was suggesting above: how can you accuse someone if you have no proof, but only suspect? Unless you see it with your own eyes you only have inference to use. So you should say nothing? In the Church case, there were issues like bringing scandal, falsely accusing people, assuming innocence rather than guilt by default, and even the chance to repent without it coming to light. That's all fine, but clearly wasn't enough. But if proof can't be ascertained do you make things publicly known to protect people? This issue came up semi-recently in a local social community, where a known predator was afoot. Do you say something to people aloud, discreetly, or not at all? Is that defamation if you never witnessed it personally but only heard about it second or third hand? Imagine now that a conspiracy theorist (say, about trafficking) believes terrible things are happening and wants to help protect those involved. How would they ever do so other than to just say the conspiracy theory out loud without proof?

[Fenring]

I had the impression Epstein was caught out more by #metoo.

It was in large part due to the one escaped sex slave who made it to the authorities, and (iirc) provided evidence of the goings on.

[yossarian22c]

I had the impression Epstein was caught out more by #metoo.

It was in large part due to the one escaped sex slave who made it to the authorities, and (iirc) provided evidence of the goings on.

And some really good investigative journalists in Miami who followed the story for years to keep the pressure on authorities to do something.

[msquared]

The judge in the Texas case decides not to reduce the judgement  and it stays at $49 million.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/judge-backs-full-49m-jury-235833777.html

[msquared]

It was only a matter of time.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/alex-jones-files-bankruptcy-following-133558775.html

I hope the judge in this case does not include the defamation rulings in it. Those should stay in place for the rest of his life.

[msquared]

Judge says no.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/judge-rejects-alex-jones-post-230900664.html