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BAD GOOD NEWS: The King’s Speech Sues NOT Suing QC For Damages Resulting From UK Naked Men Story

Happy April Fools’ Day!!! Check out our main entry on Queerclick for the full confession!
Dear QCommunity,
Near the end February we ran a story about how a then Oscar-nominated film The King’s Speech and its sharing of a set with UK Naked Men. Our story garnered world-wide attention and generated hundreds of thousands of page views. But the day after the Oscars, we received a letter from the legal representation for the film’s production company Bedlam Production suing us for “irreparable harm caused to the film and producers’ reputations.”
Even though the film won Best Director, Actor, and Picture, Bedlam held us liable for “negligently or knowingly” running the story right before the Oscars, costing the film the award for Best Art Direction. Of course it’s absurd — we ran the story because we report porn news and run updates from UK Naked Men; nevertheless Bedlam claimed that our story sullied the film’s reputation before the awards ceremony causing the Academy to deny The King’s Speech an Art Direction Oscar in hopes of avoiding a scandal over an implied approval of a gay porn set.
We initially laughed at the letter, but still took the threat very seriously and reached out to Bedlam, UK Naked Men, our legal team and other members of our QCommunity (including affiliates, porn studios, and a few trusted QCommenters who work in law) to resolve the matter amicably. Though UK Naked Men offered to issue a joint retraction and we offered to remove the article, too many other websites picked our story up and Bedlam considered the damage irreversible. They estimated the financial damage of lost sales and business for their production company at about $2 million. And though we are a successful porn blog, we do not have $2 million.
After a month of legal arbitration Bedlam eventually agreed to settle for a punitive amount of $200,000 and all rights to QueerClick.com, its sub blogs and material holdings. So it is with a heavy heart that we must announce that QueerClick.com will cease operations on April 17th. Please trust that this decision does not come lightly and that we have done everything we could to prevent it. But we have exhausted our legal options at this point and have no other recourse. Rest assured that all QCommenter and QueerClique user information will remain absolutely private and will not transfer hands when Bedlam seizes our domain name and property at the end of the month.
We want thank everyone for your help and support during this trying month and over the last seven years. We have taken great pride in our work and will never forget all the great investments that each performer, studio, advertiser, and reader brought to QC. We sincerely apologize to all those we’ve disappointed with our actions.
However, we promise to go out with a bang and will make our final two weeks ones to remember! Each of our editors will issue a final goodbye on the site’s last day. But in the meanwhile, if you have any good memories or well wishes for QC and Team Orange, please sound off in the QComments section. Thank you all very much!
Sincerely,
Editor D