Huffington Post Sued for Exploiting Its Writers

For some reason, lots of people who run websites think that writers should work for nothing. This is not a very popular thesis with writers, including those who've just filed a $105 million class action lawsuit against AOL and the Huffington Post.

The writers claim the website got at least that much value out of their work, judging from HuffPost's recent sale to AOL for $315 million.

"TheHuffingtonPost.com has been unjustly enriched by engaging in and continuing to engage in the practice of generating enormous profits by luring carefully-vetted contributors, with the prospect of 'exposure' (which TheHuffingtonPost.com deceptively fails to verify), to provide valuable content at no cost to TheHuffingtonPost.com, while reaping the entirety of the financial gain derived from such content," says lead plaintiff Jonathan Tasini.

Tasini, a former head of the National Writers Union (United Auto Workers Local 1981) says he has written four books and hundreds of articles for major magazines and newspapers. He was paid for all of that work, unlike the articles he wrote for HuffPost.

Tasini, by the way, is a writer but he's also an experienced plaintiff. He was the lead plaintiff in a little case known as Tasini v. The New York Times, a landmark case that addressed the rights of freelance authors when publications use their work online. He and his lawyers won that case before the United States Supreme court.

Peonage system

In his latest suit, which also names site co-founders Arianna Huffington, who portrays herself publicly as a liberal, and Kenneth Lerere, Tasini argues that the site's peonage system added at least $105 million to the value of the site, not one penny of which was shared by Ms. Huffington with her writers.

"The injustice experienced by plaintiff and the classes is compounded by the fact that plaintiff and the classes were selected, and in some cases sought, by defendants because of their ability to produce high quality, engaging, content for the TheHuffingtonPost.com," Tasini argues.

"Finally, and perhaps most importantly, TheHuffingtonPost.com's continued assertion that it, alone, should be enriched by the valuable content provided by plaintiff and the classes has the broad detrimental effect of setting an artificially low price for the valuable digital content created by plaintiff and the classes, depressing the market for such content and, over the long term, having a serious depressing effect on the value of intellectual content being created by plaintiff and the classes and on the ability of plaintiff and the classes to support themselves as creators of high quality, engaging, digital content," Tasini's suit alleges.

"According to Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution, the purpose of copyright is 'to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts' by allowing creators to be appropriately compensated for their contributions. Yet, despite our founders' intent, TheHuffingtonPost.com continues to assert that it, alone, should be enriched by the valuable content provided by plaintiff and the classes."

Tasini seeks class certification, statutory or treble damages for deceptive business practices and unjust enrichment, "but not less than $105 million," plus costs.