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Notes -
I've found it impossible to find thorough, unbiased reading material about the Alex Jones/Sandy Hook trial. My take is "what he did shouldn't be illegal, but if it is, wouldn't removing the content from the internet and issuing a retraction be enough?" I'd appreciate some reading material if anyone has any.
No one says it is illegal; rather it the argument is that it is a tort (i.e., defamation). ""From 1791 to the present," however, the First Amendment has "permitted restrictions upon the content of speech in a few limited areas," and has never "include[d] a freedom to disregard these traditional limitations." Id., at 382-383, 112 S.Ct. 2538. These "historic and traditional categories long familiar to the bar," Simon & Schuster, Inc. v. Members of N.Y. State Crime Victims Bd., 502 U.S. 105, 127, 112 S.Ct. 501, 116 L.Ed.2d 476 (1991) (KENNEDY, J., concurring in judgment) — including . . . defamation . . . are "well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem," Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568, 571-572, 62 S.Ct. 766, 86 L.Ed. 1031 (1942)." United States v. Stevens, 559 U.S. 460, 468-469 (2010)
An unbiased source would be a discussion of tort law in general.
As for a retraction, CT law says:
So, the plaintiff can get damages if: 1) the plaintiff demanded a retraction but the defendant refused; or 2) the defendant acted with malice in fact (i.e,, published a false statement with bad faith or improper motive).
In Jones's case, both are probably true, but not that there was no factual finding thereon because there was a default judgment entered against Jones for failure to cooperate in discovery.
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