Hollywood Couple Sues Blog Over Non-Sex Tape

By Kevin Fayle on September 24, 2009 | Last updated on March 21, 2019

Ah, there's nothing I love more than gossip blogs, celebrity sex tapes and lawsuits, especially when they're all wrapped up in one neat, tidy package.

That's exactly what I got with the news that Eric Dane and Rebecca Gayheart filed a $1m lawsuit yesterday against Gawker Media - the company that runs gawker.com and a number of other blogs - in the federal district court for Los Angeles. 
In case you're thinking to yourself "who?" and "what?", here's a breakdown of the parties involved.  Eric Dane appears on "Grey's Anatomy," a show that I must confess I have never before suffered through.  Rebecca Gayheart, his wife, was the Noxema girl back in the '90's, and has been a Hollywood actress for the past 20 years or so.  She also killed a 9 year-old with her car, but that's neither here nor there.

Gawker Media is a blog network that boasts gawker.com and valleywag.com as its flagship titles.  Last month, Gawker was the first media outlet to publish a video featuring the couple, as well as rumored Hollywood madam Kari Ann Peniche, in some birthday suit antics.  From there, the video went viral and was the most talked about thing ever, for about a day or so.

Ok, I must confess, this technically doesn't involve a sex tape, just a homemade video of a few pseudo-celebrities drunkenly talking, bathing and cavorting in various states of undress, and generally making fools of themselves while they capture it on video for all posterity.  On the parts of the video that made it out into the open for public consumption, there was no actual intercourse involved.  So it's a no-sex sex tape, or a "non-sex" tape, if you will.  

Still, the couple is not taking the publication of the non-sex tape, er, lying down, and has sued the blogging company for copyright infringement.  Apparently, they even registered their rights in the video.

My only question is this: the video made them both more famous, probably, than decades of acting ever did.  Shouldn't they be thanking Gawker instead of suing it?

I guess I'll just never understand Hollywood.
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