The big blogger gets sued by the little ["slave"] bloggers

The biter is bit! The bloggers who have helped make The Huffington Post what it is, are suing for the work they have done. How the ever voluble Adrienna will respond will be interesting to see. Bear in mind that she sold the internet newspaper she established for $315 million earlier this year.

"A group of angry bloggers, being led by freelance journalist and trade unionist Jonathan Tasini, filed the class action in New York federal court, after Huffington sold her internet newspaper in February for $315m without paying certain contributors a penny.

Tasini, who wrote more than 250 posts for The Huffington Post on an unpaid basis leading up to the site’s sale, said: “Huffington bloggers have essentially been turned into modern day slaves on Arianna Huffingtons’s plantation”. He said he was suing because “people who create content…have to be compensated” for their work.

The complainant and his lawyers believe that bloggers’ articles helped contribute to approximately a third of the sale value of the site, with about 9,000 people writing for the Huffington Post for free.

Tasini has had success in the courts in the past after he won a law suit against The New York Times a decade ago. He argued on the behalf of freelance journalists that publishers needed to seek permission from writers if they wished to use their piece for both print and online platforms."

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