what kind of punishment do you think he deserves?

I’d agree re bankruptcy but can you discern between your use of damages (which you say is not a punishment) and fines (which you say are a punishment?

One is payed to the state, the other to another person, as in one regulates the relation to the state, the other the relation to another person.

What's your view on statutory damages for copyright infringement? "Wilful infringement" has statutory damages up to $150k per work. This is similar. Like this it's a punishment imposed by the state, through the medium of inflated damages.

No, I do not consider damages in copyright infringement a punishment. Whether damages are measured correctly or not in some case or other is beside the point I was making.

I’m confused what you define a punishment as then.

This is correct. People should split intent and outcome. So for example: you going to prison is a punishment. Your wife leaving you because of it, is not part of the punishment, that is an outcome, but it is not an outcome that is intended. The same here. There are damaged to be payed to the victims of alex' Jones heinous lies that have provably made the lives of people that were already victims so much worse. The judges entitled them to restitution for the damages done and because Jones didn't turn up for court and had contempt for the court by ignoring direct orders they probably punished him by making the sum very high. However. Going bankrupt was not the aim of the punishment. It just asks a high sum. He might have been able to pay it, which would have been fine. However. Jones didnt stop being an unethical human (pretty objectively, as long as you don't believe his lies) and tried to slither out of his duty to pay.

> Jones didn't turn up for court and had contempt for the court by ignoring direct orders they probably punished him by making the sum very high.

Just fyi he did, the court kept claiming he had to produce documents / analytics he said he didn’t have. There’s no evidence the documents ever existed, but judge disagreed, so they issued a default judgement (ie no trial).

https://www.npr.org/2021/11/15/1055864452/alex-jones-found-l...

They then had a jury trial to determine damages were in the billions (lol)

https://www.npr.org/2024/06/07/nx-s1-4996347/alex-jones-liqu...

And lost in all this is what jones actually did… which in my judgement is not even liable and we wouldn’t even know because a trial was never held —

https://www.mediamatters.org/alex-jones/here-exactly-what-al...

Which, sure I think is nuts. But I don’t see anything in there besides his opinion and trying to support his bat shit crazy opinion. So what, he thinks it was a fake event. As far as I can tell from this (and perhaps I’m missing something), he didn’t do anything to anyone. If we start penalizing calling people a liar, we’re going to end up in a much worse place where all we have are liars

>the court kept claiming he had to produce documents / analytics he said he didn’t have

Which his lawyer then mistakenly sent to the Plaintiff's lawyer, so, they did have them.

Just FYI, the plaintiffs lawyers (not necessarily the court) was requesting financial documents that FSS LLC are required by law to have. They had two years to comply and did not.

Also FYI 'a trial was never held' is a common talking point used by Alex Jones on his program. He and his lawyers are responsible for there not being a trial. Their conduct guaranteed that there was no trial. It's a farce for him to complain about something that he is responsible for.

The Sandy Hook families have literally been awarded punitive damages.

Their point is literally punishment. That is why punitive damages exist in civil law. It's what the word punitive means.

Something can be punishing without being a punishment.

The intent is explicitly and specifically to punish someone and be a punishment.

Compensatory damages are awarded in an attempt to compensate the plaintiff for the damage they received due to the actions of the defendant. Punitive damages are awarded to the plaintiff on top of the compensatory damages and their exact purpose is to punish the defendant for their actions.

They are two different types of damages and the exact purpose of punitive damages is to be a punishment. It's their raison d'etre. They were created to provide further levers to punish people.