Rebecca Gayheart, Eric Dane win settlement over sex tape

New York (ANI): Actress Rebecca Gayheart and her husband Eric Dane have won a low-six figure settlement from Gawker Media for posting a their homemade sex tape online. The “McSteamy" tape had been published on Gawker"s Defamer blog last year and it shows Dane, 37, nude in a hot tub with wife Gayheart, 38, and friend Kari Ann Peniche.

The couple filed a 1 million dollar copyright infringement lawsuit against Gawker in September, arguing the media Web site didn"t have permission to publish their private sex tape. The six-figure settlement also orders Gawker to remove any traces of the sex tape from its Web sites. The video has been viewed more than 4 million times.

“Although we are confident that our use of the video on Gawker was protected fair use - because the posts already had been available to our readers for nearly a year, and because we already had won an important decision from the court striking large parts of the plaintiffs" damages claims - we agreed to remove the posts as part of a global settlement to avoid the burden of further litigation," the New York Daily News quoted Gawker chief operating officer Gaby Darbyshire as saying in a statement.