I’m about to go sign my lease, which sucks because I need to be here posting some stuff after sleeping so long. But, I’m going to get this short one up before I roll out.

The topic, you ask? Well, Nick Denton has finally released a long article on the court verdicts from the past few days, and it’s a pretty interesting read. I say that not because it says anything honest or comes to terms with what happened, but it is amusing as hell to see him have to defend his position once again. Oh, and he again claims he’s going to come out on top before it’s all over with, through the appeals courts. That may very well happen, but him and his brand have still been greatly diminished by The Hulkster. I don’t think they will be coming back to the level they were once at.

Anyway, here’s a few choice excerpts from the post

The enormous size of the verdict is chilling to Gawker Media and other publishers with a tabloid streak, but it is also a flag to higher courts that this case went wildly off the rails. The plaintiff’s lawyers, with the occasional assist from our witnesses, successfully painted Gawker as representative of an untrammeled internet that good and decent people should find frightening and distasteful. Emotion was permitted to trump the law, and key evidence and witnesses were kept from the jury…

A state appeals court and a federal judge have already held repeatedly that the 2012 commentary and short video excerpt, which joined an existing conversation and explored the public’s fascination with celebrity sex tapes, were newsworthy. We have had our day in trial court, and we lost. We will have our day back in appeals court, and we will be vindicated…

For his part, Hogan testified that he knew nothing about the other tapes of him and Cole. I learned on Friday that there was substantial evidence that he and one of his lawyers David Houston had watched the tapes—including FBI surveillance audio recorded as they were doing so—and that they were aware that one of them contained racist epithets. The trial court barred us from presenting that evidence to the jury as well…

There is a reason why judges typically hew to the First Amendment and protect free speech from the censorious impulses of juries. It is specifically designed to protect minority opinion from majority outrage. Freedom of expression will always be more popular in principle than in practice. We want to be free to express ourselves, but are less enthusiastic when that freedom is exercised by others with whom we disagree. Nobody likes a critic.

There’s a whole lot more, but I don’t have time to go through section by section and fisk the entire thing, unfortunately. I will give Denton some small credit, though. He is a much better and more persuasive writer than pretty much his entire staff, then again, that’s not saying much. His whole spiel comes down to:

Muh free speech allows me to post a sex tape of Hogan, cause he talked about his dick a couple times. Plus he’s a nasty RAYCIST! Oh, and the court was corrupt, and we gonna win on appeal.

You’re welcome. I just saved you some time in case you don’t feel like reading anything more than that excerpt.

The most interesting part, to me anyway, was how he threw some shade at his own witnesses at the top of the highlighted section above. I don’t know if he meant their “experts” or his former employee, A.J. Daulerio. To me, Daulerio’s comments helped sink him more than anything else, but he’s seemed pretty loyal to him in the past. Eh, who knows. I’m sure he’s just salty all the way around. I know I would be. I can also imagine that he’s wishing they had never gotten themselves into this mess in the first place. All over 9 seconds of Hulk Hogan having sex. It definitely wasn’t worth it, no matter how you look at it.

That’s Gawker. They could have written snarky and nasty columns about the tape, but no. Denton and his cronies had to go the full mile and publish portions of the tape itself. Then, they got cocky and refused to adhere to Hogan’s cease and desist letter. Oh, and did I mention that Daulerio was originally going to publish a follow-up on the sex tape, presumably with more footage? Yea, they definitely earned their beatdown. Now we can all wait and see what happens on appeal.

Hopefully the title doesn’t get stripped by Hogan on a Dusty Finish. Yes, I actually worked that in and the best part it, it totally fits.