The bloggers, led by Jonathan Tasini, a union organizer who has been writing for The Huffington Post since December 2005, want to be compensated for the content they’ve contributed freely to the site — content, they feel, helped The Huffington Post achieve its $315 million sale price.
This is not the first time Tasini has gone to battle for freelancers’ rights. He was also the lead plaintiff in a successful Supreme Court case versus The New York Times, which ruled in 2005 that publications could not license back issues in electronic databases such as LexisNexis without the authorization of freelancers.
Interestingly enough, parent company AOL has been s ued before for using the content of unpaid contributors.
In the 1990s, AOL established a Community Leader Program that rewarded users with discounts on their monthly AOL connection fees in exchange for moderating chartrooms, answering questions from fellow subscribers and participating in other activities. In 1999, some 2,000 leaders filed a class-action lawsuit, Hallissey et al v. American Online, Inc., arguing that they were more like employees than volunteers, and thus deserved minimum wage pay and benefits under the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act. The case was resolved when both parties agreed on a $15 million settlement.
We have reached out to Tasini for further information and will update this post accordingly.
Image courtesy of Flickr, World Economic Forum
[via Forbes]
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