Again, this entire thing could have been avoided if they had just taken down the fucking video. They actually wrote an
article called
"A Judge Told Us to Take Down our Hulk Hogan Sex Tape Post. We Won't." They were fucking
bragging about it. I'm having trouble feeling sorry for Nick Denton when he could have axed this thing before it even started.
That part was really stupid. Blowing off a C&D because you think you'll win a case is one thing. When there's an actual court order and you just say up yours, you can end up losing on contempt of court even if you would ultimately have otherwise won the case. In this case, you also end up with a furious judge who hates your guts.
The dickery didn't stop there, though. Once they were in front of a jury, they still kept on acting like arrogant scofflaw pricks.
Something about juries. They've been taken away from their jobs, their families, and their lives to listen to boring bullshit for days or even weeks on end. This can cost them thousands of dollars and they didn't even do anything wrong (other than not blow off a civic duty). They're taking the situation seriously.
So when the assholes who are responsible for them being there are flippant, rude dicks deliberately wasting their time, this is not going to make them happy with you.
Not saying they'd deliberately find you guilty of something just because they don't like you, but suppose your behavior really needs to be interpreted generously for you not to be guilty of something. Don't expect much generosity.
When this trial is a precedent for shutting down freedom of he press whenever they print anything Trump or Hillary doesn't like in a year or two I'll bump this thread and say "I told you so" and I bet you'll all feel pretty silly for cheerleading the death of journalistic freedom.
If it involves using stolen videos clandestinely taken of them having sex in their own private homes and that's the only informational content, it's not particularly valuable speech by even the most generous interpretation.
The court may have presided over an unfair trial or used improper legal principles in its decision making and then it should be reversed because of the legal principle, not because anyone is going to compare this shit to the Pentagon Papers.
