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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$. Wage theft? Worker is entitled to 10 times of what they were illegally not paid. Running fraud? You must give back 10 times what you stolen, etc etc.
(if I would be in power to legislate something - then maybe I would end with lower multipliers, but someone losing entire wealth after running large scale fraud seem much more reasonable than going to prison for few months and keeping stolen funds - again, maybe it is problem of local justice system)
"emotional damages" is overused but reasonable in this case. Being victim of top 0.05%* of harassment seems a good reason to get eye-watering amounts of money from chief harasser. In older times other solutions would be used, but this modern one seems preferable.
*1 in 5 000 harassment seems reasonable estimate to me in this case, as in "there are about 168 000 more harassed people in USA and 335 000 000 less harassed ones" but have not explored this one deeply and maybe I was mislead by what reached me.
Going on a tangent here, but I would raise that to "cut their right hand off". Those who invented and perpetuate the practice of spam calls have ruined the commons of "replying to calls from anyone who isn't in your contact list yet".
I would argue that 500$ would be better, because if people responsible can be reached then "get 500$ for spam call" will result in rise of cottage industry of people earning this way and being deeply interested in hunting down responsible people.
That is a fully intended effect.
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