HULK HOGAN’S lawsuit against Gawker Media, heard in a Florida courtroom last month, had the surreal quality of, well, a professional wrestling match. Mr. Hogan sued the company after Gawker posted a video clip showing the wrestler having sex with the then-wife of his then-friend, the radio personality Bubba the Love Sponge.

The amount of damages awarded to Mr. Hogan in the trial — a total of $140 million — implies that the excesses of digital media might be causing a backlash. (Gawker has said that it will appeal.) While the balance between privacy and press freedom is typically tipped to the latter in the United States, Amy Gajda, a law professor and author of “The First Amendment Bubble,” argued in Slate that recent court cases suggested “that these jurors may not be alone in giving new deference to privacy concerns.”

What we really need are more nuanced laws that can safeguard privacy in the digital age. Courts in the United States have held that public figures are less entitled to privacy than the rest of us. But the Hogan case became less about who’s a public figure and more about the ways in which the Internet has allowed our private information to be made public in ways we didn’t intend. For all its absurdity, the fight over Hulk Hogan’s sex tape became a fun-house mirror reflection of the issues that affect all of us.

Gawker defended the news value of the video, claiming that Mr. Hogan had lost his right to privacy because he was a celebrity and had already boasted for years about his sex life “on talk radio and shows like Howard Stern,” Nick Denton, Gawker’s founder, wrote on the company’s website after the verdict. Mr. Hogan, whose real name is Terry Bollea, countered that there was a firm line between the man and the alter ego he plays.