In 2012, Gawker posted one minute and 40 seconds of salacious excerpts from a 30-minute videotape that it said it received from an anonymous sender. Mr. Bollea sued, saying that his former friend, a radio shock jock who had changed his legal name to Bubba the Love Sponge Clem, made the tape without his knowledge. He said its online publication was cruel and crass, driven solely by the quest for clicks and profits.

Lawyers for Gawker Media and its chief owner and founder, Nick Denton, who is personally named in the lawsuit along with a former editor, argue that Mr. Bollea is a flashy celebrity who in radio appearances and writings had often discussed details of his sex life, stoking public fascination that, they say, made the topic fair game for journalists — a matter of “public concern,” in First Amendment parlance.

In particular, they said, the existence of the tape had been publicly discussed in the news media, and by Mr. Bollea himself, for several months before Gawker posted the excerpts.

“Gawker is defending its First Amendment right to join an ongoing conversation about a celebrity when others are talking about it and the celebrity is talking about it,” said the website’s chief lawyer in the case, Seth D. Berlin of the firm Levine, Sullivan, Koch & Schulz, in an interview.

“This is a crucial issue not only for Gawker, but for all media organizations,” he said.

But “conversation” is the critical word in that statement, countered Mr. Bollea’s personal lawyer, David R. Houston, who is part of the trial team. “There’s a world of difference between discussing something and showing a pornographic video, something that goes online and can be seen forever,” he said.