Huffington Post bloggers are launching a class-action lawsuit against the popular website. Quick, someone make a slideshow of The 10 Least Thought-Out Lawsuits in the History of Lawsuits!
Led by writer/union organizer Jonathan Tasni, the unpaid bloggers are seeking a share of the sweet, sweet $315 million that HuffPost (and Arianna herself) received when it was bought by AOL in February.
(Full disclosure: This writer once drew an hourly wage working for HuffPost’s blog section.)
Tasni has blogged for HuffPost for free since its early days, when the site was still very much a salon for Huffington’s personal network rather the aggregation machine it has since become. He has not written for the site since February 10, three days after the AOL deal was announced.
While Metro is sympathetic to the plight of the unpaid blogger, we can not think of a lawsuit more likely to be thrown out. None of the writers were coerced or tricked into writing for HuffPo, after all. As for the argument that the bloggers provide integral value to the site: well, no. They may been the meat of the site, years ago, but they certainly aren’t now. HuffPost is in the aggregation business, and if bloggers don’t want to be in the HuffPost business, no one’s forcing them. (via Forbes)
