Setting aside the lurid details, the Hogan case is actually pretty straightforward. Mr. Bollea’s lawyers are arguing that their client’s sex life is not a newsworthy subject, and thus the decision to publish the tape constitutes an invasion of his right to privacy.

Gawker’s answer to this claim is that Mr. Bollea — or Hulk Hogan — has made his sexual proclivities a matter of public interest by talking about them in “exceedingly graphic” terms on his reality TV show, in his two memoirs and elsewhere, including Howard Stern’s radio show. (As for the lurid details, the filings are public, but read them at your own risk; among other things, you will never see Hulk Hogan’s trademark mustache the same way again.)

It’s surprising that the suit has gone this far, given the wide berth that judges have historically granted the news media when it comes to covering the lives of public figures. “It’s in many respects a dangerous First Amendment precedent for the court to let a case like this go to a jury,” said Charles D. Tobin, an entertainment and media lawyer at Holland & Knight. “Newsworthiness should be decided by people who choose to look at Gawker or not look at Gawker, not by a jury.”

Most executives would not consider commenting on a pending lawsuit. But Mr. Denton actually suggested that I ask him about the Hogan case that night on his fire escape.

He told me that his first impulse had been to settle. “If it had been a reasonable amount, we would absolutely have tried to make this thing go away,” he said. But with the case now going to trial, Mr. Denton is clearly taking some pleasure in the opportunity to cast himself as a champion of the First Amendment.

“We’re talking about a central issue of our time, which is the proliferation of marketing,” he told me. “We are being bombarded by marketing all of the time — marketing and self-promoters, people who wake up in the morning and get into character, whether they are Captain America or Hulk Hogan. If you want to be in the marketing haze, then be in the haze. But the Internet does give you the ability right now to go to Gawker and to find out what really happened.”

If you believe the First Amendment is a sacred doctrine in our self-governing society, it’s pretty much impossible to side against Gawker. But Mr. Denton is engaging in some spin of his own here. What “really happened” is that Hulk Hogan was secretly videotaped having sex, and that Gawker leapt at the chance to publish the footage in a post headlined, “Even for a Minute, Watching Hulk Hogan Have Sex in a Canopy Bed Is Not Safe for Work but Watch It Anyway.” There was some accompanying text that tried to put the video into a larger context: “We watch this footage because it’s something we’re not supposed to see (sometimes) but we come away satisfied that when famous people have sex it’s closer to the sex we as civilians have from time to time.” But let’s be clear: This post was less about piercing a marketing haze than it was about tapping into the timeless appeal of celebrity voyeurism, the more prurient the better.

Whatever the jury decides, the public has already voted with its eyeballs on the post’s newsworthiness. It has generated more than five million clicks.