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In another case that involved a sex tape-one made by actress Pamela Anderson and her then-husband, musician Tommy Lee-a district court found that Penthouse magazine’s right to publish a photo taken from the video outweighed any right to privacy that the two celebrities had. So the classic 1988 case involving Larry Flynt, publisher of the porn magazine Hustler, found that the publication was ultimately protected by the First Amendment even though its satirical piece on evangelical preacher Jerry Falwell was offensive by virtually any public standard.
#Gawker down free
But the test of a free speech standard isn’t that it protects speech everyone agrees with-it’s that it protects a media outlet’s right to publish offensive or unsavory or distasteful speech as well.
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And such awards are often set aside a short time later.Īs with so many First Amendment cases, there’s no question that the Gawker story is unpleasant and possibly even offensive, and certainly distasteful in a variety of ways. While the size of the jury award has gotten a lot of attention (the court tacked on another $25 million in punitive damages earlier this week, part of which is to be paid by Gawker founder Nick Denton and writer AJ Dilaurio personally), the legal reality is that juries are notoriously prone to award huge sums based on questionable reasoning.