Eric And Rebecca Drop $1 Million Lawsuit, "Naked Tape" Gets Removed
Posted on Wed Aug 4th, 2010 10:55am PDT By X17 Staff
Victory for McSteamy and his wife! Sort of.
Eric Dane and Rebecca Gayheart filed a lawsuit last September against Gawker's Defamer blog - as well as its sister site Fleshbot - for showing a "naked tape" of the couple and the couple's friend Kari Ann Peniche involved in a series of private acts. The footage was viewed more than 4 million times over the course of the year.
Now Dane and Gayheart have dropped their $1 million suit, the homemade vid has been taken down and the couple received a settlement in the low six figures from Gawker, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
That being said, everyone's already seen the footage! Dane and Gayheart have repeatedly cited copyright infringement, but Gawker insists their use of the tape was fair game. Read what Gawker COO Gaby Darbyshire said in a statement below:
- "Although we are confident that our use of the video on Gawker was protected fair use, because the posts already had been available to our readers for nearly a year, and because we already had won an important decision from the court striking large parts of the plaintiffs' damages claims, we agreed to remove the posts as part of a global settlement to avoid the burden of further litigation."
So who's the winner here?