Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones is seeking to protect his personal social media accounts from being sold in the upcoming auction of his Infowars media platform to pay more than $1 billion he owes relatives of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, claiming selling those accounts would violate his privacy and deny him a chance to make a fresh start after bankruptcy.
The trustee overseeing the liquidation and selloff of the assets of Infowars and its parent company Free Speech Systems, asked a federal judge on Friday to include the social media accounts as part of the auctions scheduled for November and December. The judge delayed a decision on the matter for at least a week.
Jones’ lawyers argue the personal media accounts that use his real name are not owned by Infowars or FSS, but are controlled by him personally, and should be considered part of his “persona” that cannot be owned by someone other than himself.
The precedent troubles me. That a media account in a personal name, even if through that one does commercial or objectionable things, can become a commodity to buy and sell - and be forced to sell.
The same precedent applies to ordinary people too. Should a debt collector acquire your Facebook page? Because you used Facebook marketplace it’s now a business asset?
If you had a talk show called the [Your Name] show, should it be immune to bankruptcy courts? Should a the company [Your Name] Inc. not be allowed to be bought and sold? Should we forbid people from selling tshirts or pictures with their names and faces on them? Where do you think we should draw the line?
Most people don’t own a business. The occasional use of facebook marketplace doesn’t make a personal account part of a nonexistant business.
That’s a fair point. It seems rather awkward. Selling off the assets of said talk show, easy decision. Selling the brand, though, if it’s tied to your person / personal name, that seems dubious. Especially against the named person’s will.
For something like t-shirt likenesses, I suppose I think the line is the person’s consent. I can sell permission for my face to be on your t-shirt, but being forced to seems wrong. In the extreme case: a person is legally entitled to sell nude images of themselves, but surely a court would never order it, even if that person had been previously selling nude images.
So if he had a warehouse full of tshirts with his name or face on them and decides after filing bankruptcy that he doesn’t want to sell them anymore, should he just get to keep it? Should it all be destroyed?
If he took a cattle brand and burned his name into everything on set, does that mean he shouldn’t have to sell it any more?
If someone was already selling porn before, do you think if they continued to that they shouldn’t have to give any of that money they earned to the people they owe money to? This case isn’t anywhere near that extreme because he’s not the only person in the world named ‘Alex Jones’, so how much of his ‘likeness’ is being sold is debatable to begin with. And also, we aren’t talking about future permission to use his likeness, we’re talking about a social media account used to promote his business.