Four new writers have joined the class-action lawsuit filed by Jonathan Tasini (pictured, via) against The Huffington Post. The suit argues that the online publication “was unjustly enriched by valuable content provided by over 9,000 writers while outwardly engaging in deceptive business practices by hiding the value provided by its contributors.”
The new plaintiffs included: filmmaker and writer Molly Secours, writer Tara Dublin, marketing expert Richard Laermer, sports writer Billy Altman. HuffPo lawyers have already filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit.
Attorney Jeff Kurzon elaborated in the release: “These new class representatives are the consummate cross section of The Huffington Post’s content providers … The class representatives are talented, well-respected writers who should have more opportunities to be compensated in the digital age instead of fewer.” (Via PaidContent)
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The Huffington Post‘s lawyers have urged a New York City judge to dismiss Jonathan Tasini‘s lawsuit against the company. The filing argued that “no rule of statutory or common law, in New York or elsewhere, recognizes such a remarkable and unwarranted intrusion into the relationship between publishers and contributors.”
In April, Tasini (pictured, via) filed a class action lawsuit against Arianna Huffington, The Huffington Post and AOL. The suit includes an estimated 9,000 bloggers and seeks damages of “an amount to be determined at trial but not less than $105 million.”
Here’s an excerpt from the motion (PDF link): “many of the 216 blog postings cited in the Complaint demonstrate on their face that Mr. Tasini took full advantage of the platform The Huffington Post gave him. They show, for example, that Mr. Tasini used his Huffington Post blog to sell copies of books he authored, to link to his personal “micro-blogging” account at the Twitter.com website, and to announce one of his Senatorial campaigns and solicit donations for another.” (Via PaidContent)
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Today paidContent published a long interview with blogger Jonathan Tasini about the class action lawsuit he filed against The Huffington Post on behalf of unpaid bloggers.
Here’s an excerpt: “I think there’s a lot of support out there. I keep getting emails from a whole variety of writers who want to join on as plaintiffs, who are giving us all sorts of inside information. There still is a lot of fear out there. Some of the people expressing opposition to what we’re doing are just bootlickers. I think people fear being blacklisted.”
At the same time, Gawker investigated the author in a long post entitled “Guy Suing HuffPo for Not Paying Bloggers Doesn’t Pay Bloggers.” Yesterday Arianna Huffington criticized the suit and Tasini’s “pile of bile.”
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Forbes broke the news today that blogger, author and former political candidate Jonathan Tasini will lead a lawsuit against Arianna Huffington and her site’s new corporate parent, AOL. We will update this post as the story evolves.
Tasini (pictured, via) had blogged for the network since 2005, but his unpaid work ended on February 10th with this post. Earlier in his career, Tasini sued the New York Times over freelance pay. Most recently, he published the book, The Audacity of Greed: Free Markets, Corporate Thieves, and the Looting of America.
Here’s more about his NY Times lawsuit, from his biography: “He was the lead plaintiff in Tasini vs. The New York Times, the landmark electronic rights case that took on the unauthorized use of workers by thousands of freelance authors in the electronic age. In a historic decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June 2001 that media companies had illegally used the works of writers without their permission. That precedent lead to a series of class action lawsuits (in which Jonathan served as a principle strategist and negotiator) which lead to a mass settlement for authors in 2005 and the creation of an $18 million fund to compensate writers.”
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