Red Light District Settles with Scott Stapp in Sex Tape Suit

Former Creed vocalist Scott Stapp has settled his lawsuit against Red Light District over a controversial 1999 video of Stapp and Kid Rock having sex with four groupies on a tour bus in Miami.

Stapp sued Red Light for invasion of privacy last year after the company announced its intention to release the video on the internet. As part of the undisclosed settlement, Red Light has agreed not to distribute the video. Stapp also received what a Red Light spokesman called "a nominal amount of money" for pain and suffering.

"The parties involved reached an agreement in principle months ago," Red Light District’s attorney Ray Tammadon told AVN.com. "We came to an agreement that we’re not going to be distributing this tape, although it’s not big news because that had been agreed to in the Kid Rock lawsuit almost a year ago in Michigan."

Rock successfully blocked RLD from releasing the video in February 2006, later blaming Stapp for the tape leaking on to the internet. In April, a Miami-Dade Circuit Court dismissed a lawsuit filed by one of the women featured in the video due to the plaintiff’s refusal to reveal her identity.

"We never got off the ground with any release of the video," Tammadon continued. "The farthest we went was to essentially advertise it for a brief period– maybe 24 hours – on the internet, where various select clips were displayed. A short clip, maybe 30 seconds, with no nudity, was picked up by local news – but the tape was never distributed."

Stapp claimed the tape was stolen from a safe in his house by someone seeking to damage his solo career. Although Red Light previously maintained that it had the legal right to distribute the tape, the settlement appears to indicate that a third party may have misrepresented his ownership of the property.

"David Joseph was approached by someone who we believed was the owner and copyright holder of the tape," Tammadon said. "This individual had the tape in his possession for a number of years; he approached us and represented that he had shot the video and was the owner of the tape. After the lawsuits were filed, some of the claims made by this individual were disputed by the plaintiffs in this case. There were enough disputed facts that led us to believe this settlement was a good solution."

"It’s unfortunate that we couldn’t release this for the public to see," Red Light’s David Joseph told AVN.com. "It would have been excellent. We tried."