Class-Action Lawsuit of the Day: Union organizer and Huffington Post contributor Jonathan Tasini has filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of HuffPo’s unpaid bloggers seeking $105 million in damages, claiming volunteers generated a third of HuffPo’s revenue and were therefore owed a third of its AOL sale value.
In his complaint, Tasini doesn’t explain how he came to this exact figure, nor does he detail why the site should now pay for work bloggers willingly provided free of charge.
“Instead,” Peter Kafka writes, “Tasini’s argument is in large part directed at the state of Internet content-making today, where users and contributors are frequently asked to help build a Web site without getting any financial compensation.”
AOL, incidentally, is no stranger to this sort of thing, having settled out of court with unpaid writers back in 1999.
[mediamemo.]