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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.
At the very minimum he should also apologise for blatantly lying and inventing conspiracy theories about their dead children and refund costs caused by his lying.
And also some reasonable compensation (maybe about 10 000 000 $ per slandered person?).
Why $10M is reasonable? I mean, spreading vile lies is without doubt despicable, but $10M is more than life earnings of most Americans, and that not taking into account future value discounts. Basically, it's a sum that moves you to a category of "never has to work again unless you want to" and maybe the same for their family (depending on the size). I could understand if that was presented as "reasonable punishment" - this is a ruinous amount for the liar, and if you want to ensure nobody lies in such manner ever, it's reasonable to use a huge fine to ensure that. However, as a compensation, I do not understand why it is reasonable that a person who was a victim of a lie (admittedly, a very vile and disgusting one, but still one lie), should instantly become top 1% rich just because of it? I mean, if they suffered huge economic or physical losses because of the lie, I'd understand this, but did they suffer losses like that?
I would not wish to be put through such thing (extreme lies about me and my dead children by someone influential enough to result in idiots and insane people harassing me).
Though I consider being willing to survive through years of that in exchange of massive amount of money such as 10 000 000 $ dollars.
Therefore it seems to me enough to offset damage caused.
And yes, I am not including murders itself in that.
Note also in general I think that transfer of funds to victim should be done more often. You hit someone with a car? That is not your car anymore but goes to a victim. It was not your car or some cheap wreck? 10% of income goes to victim unless huge amount of funds is paid, enough to offset damage you did. You robbed someone? 1000% of what you stole goes to the victims. (note: maybe this is done already in USA). You run automated call spam? Each victim is entitled to 500$. Wage theft? Worker is entitled to 10 times of what they were illegally not paid. Running fraud? You must give back 10 times what you stolen, etc etc.
(if I would be in power to legislate something - then maybe I would end with lower multipliers, but someone losing entire wealth after running large scale fraud seem much more reasonable than going to prison for few months and keeping stolen funds - again, maybe it is problem of local justice system)
"emotional damages" is overused but reasonable in this case. Being victim of top 0.05%* of harassment seems a good reason to get eye-watering amounts of money from chief harasser. In older times other solutions would be used, but this modern one seems preferable.
*1 in 5 000 harassment seems reasonable estimate to me in this case, as in "there are about 168 000 more harassed people in USA and 335 000 000 less harassed ones" but have not explored this one deeply and maybe I was mislead by what reached me.
Nobody is denying that. The question is whether it is MORE than enough.
To be more precise, I think that 10 000 000$ is enough to offset damage caused and a bit higher than that but not enough to be absurd (I would definitely not take deal to get such harassment and 1 000 000$)
Saying "I wouldn't take such a deal" is kind of a red herring, because when you make a deal it's to your benefit. That is, if someone said "I'd make the deal to let someone abuse for $10m", that indicates that they will actually come out ahead by getting $10m for the abuse. But the law isn't there to help you turn a profit, it's to make you whole. So at best, whether someone would make a deal to exchange $x for harassment is irrelevant. At worst, it indicates that the amount is too high because they feel the deal is in their favor. Either way, it's not a good benchmark for the law.
not really
If typical person in such situation would not take it at all and it would be awful deal then compensation is too small (say, 5$ for cutting off both hands)
If for typical person in such situation it would be amazing deal (1 billion for cutting out single finger of a left foot) then compensation is overly large.
If deal would be not going in either extreme then compensation is sane (though still may be overly large and overly small).
You're ignoring the fact that a person would not take a deal where they break even, even though that's what the law is trying to achieve. So yes, I wouldn't take a deal to cut my hands off for $5. But I also wouldn't take a fair deal where I get the value of my hands, either. I'm only going to take a deal where getting my hands cut off nets me a profit.
For example, let's take money out of the picture, since we can't really figure what the value of my hands is. Let's say that someone wanted to cut off my hands (which are in perfect shape and I have no reason to get rid of them), but that they would replace them with perfectly functional artificial hands. These artificial hands wouldn't be an improvement or a downgrade in any way compared to my natural hands. Furthermore, the procedure would take only seconds, be completely painless, and I would even be able to have my memory of the procedure erased if I wanted. In short, my life after getting my hands cut off would be the same as it was before.
Nobody would take this deal, or almost nobody would. Because - why should you? It benefits you nothing. I have perfectly good hands now, I don't need or want to replace them with hands that will do the same exact thing. Yet this is also a completely fair deal, the exact kind of deal the law strives to achieve. Even though it's perfectly fair, nobody would actually take it.
So then, since a person isn't going to take even a fair deal (only a profitable one), the fact that someone won't take a deal can't actually tell us anything. It could be that the deal is unfair, but it could just be that the deal is fair and therefore not worth the bother.
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