Appeals Court Smacks Down Unpaid HuffPo Bloggers Who Demanded A Cut Of HuffPo Sale

from the easily-dismissed dept

After Huffington Post was sold to AOL for $315 million, there was a really, really silly discussion among a small group of the volunteers who blogged on the site for free (again, voluntarily), who whined about how this was somehow unfair. They ignored the fact that they took none of the risk, spent none of the money, had no obligations to provide content and clearly agreed to receive no money for their actions -- but still, they whined. Some then went even further and filed a very silly lawsuit, led by Jonathan Tasini. Tasini, previously, had successfully sued the NY Times concerning that company's handling of freelance works. Of course, given that he's now sued two major publications which he freelanced for, what publication would ever allow him to write freelance pieces again? It seemed that his success in the NYT suit led him to be over confident with this lawsuit. There was simply no basis for it: he blogged on the site voluntarily, knowing that he'd receive no compensation for it. To then whine that the investors, who took all the risk, made some money selling the site when he had no equity stake in the site, isn't just sour grapes, it's legally ridiculous.

Thankfully, the district court smacked the case down pretty hard, and did so with prejudice, denying him the ability to refile an amended complaint. However, Tasini wasn't ready to give up, and appealed the original ruling. The appeals court has now taken its turn in smacking down the lawsuit, noting that Tasini's argument is simply ridiculous, as you can see in the full filing (also embedded below):

The problem with plaintiffs' argument is that it has no basis in their Amended Complaint. Nowhere in the Amended Complaint do plaintiffs allege that The Huffington Post represented that their work was purely for public service or that The Huffington Post would not subsequently be sold to another company. To the contrary, plaintiffs were perfectly aware that The Huffington Post was a forprofit enterprise, which derived revenues from their submissions through advertising. Perhaps most importantly, at all times prior to the merger when they submitted their work to The Huffington Post, plaintiffs understood that they would receive compensation only in the form of exposure and promotion. Indeed, these arrangements have never changed.

Though it is no doubt a great disappointment to find that The Huffington Post did not live up to the ideals plaintiffs ascribed to it, plaintiffs have made no factual allegations that, if taken as true, would permit the inference that The Huffington Post deceived the plaintiffs or otherwise received a benefit at the expense of the plaintiffs such that equity and good conscience require restitution.

In other words, Tasini's inability to accept the deal he made, and the fact that he apparently got jealous of Huffington's ability to sell the site, is not a legal issue at all. The court also re-affirms that the dismissal with prejudice was entirely proper. Maybe, instead of spending all this time on lawsuits, Tasini would be better served trying to build his own site. Of course, as was ironically noted after he filed his lawsuit, Tasini actually did that once and didn't pay the bloggers who blogged for him...

Filed Under: contract, entitlement, equity, greed, jonathan tasini
Companies: aol, huffington post

Judge Smacks Down Lawsuit From HuffPo Volunteers, Says 'They Got What They Paid For'

from the and-stay-away dept

When Jonathan Tasini and a few others filed a lawsuit against the Huffington Post last year, we called it the dumbest lawsuit ever. Even though Tasini has had some luck in filing class action lawsuits against media properties, this lawsuit was completely and absolutely frivolous. Tasini (and many others) had blogged on The Huffington Post for free. That was the deal from the beginning and it was clearly laid out: Huffington Post provided them with a platform which they could use, and they could promote themselves however they wanted, but they didn't get paid. Huffington Post does have some paid reporters, but they have different rules and responsibilities (including requirements on how much they write, etc.) When the Huffington Post sold for $315 million, Tasini decided that he and the other volunteer writers deserved $105 million.

There were all sorts of problems with his argument, beyond just the fact that he agreed to basic terms and was trying to go back and change them afterwards. It also showed a complete misunderstanding of the nature of equity in a company. If Huffington Post had flopped and was in debt, would Tasini then be legally required to help cover the debt? Of course not. Ownership (equity) is a totally separate issue from compensation -- and the capital gains on equity have everything to do with the risk that the founders and investors put into HuffPo, completely unrelated to the question of direct compensation. But, of course, none of that matters because, again, Tasini agreed to the deal upfront in which he blogged for free. If he didn't understand the terms of the deal, that was his problem. The arguments in his filing were even more ridiculous, where (despite this not being a copyright issue) he pretended that the Copyright Clause of the Constitution meant that content creators must be "appropriately compensated." The whole thing was a complete joke.

It was made even more ridiculous when it later came out that Tasini himself had a blog... on which he had volunteer writers who he did not pay. Not only was the lawsuit stupid, but it was filed by a hypocrite who didn't understand the law and did the same thing he was angry at HuffPo for doing.

Thankfully, it appears the judge agreed. Not only did the court dismiss the lawsuit, but it did so with prejudice, meaning that Tasini can't just refile the lawsuit to make up for its failings. The judge is effectively saying that it doesn't matter what legal arguments Tasini makes, he has absolutely no case.

There is no question that the plaintiffs submitted their materials to The Huffington Post with no expectation of monetary compensation and that they got what they paid for — exposure in The Huffington Post....

Moreover, equity and good conscience plainly do not support the plaintiffs in this matter. No one forced the plaintiffs to give their work to The Huffington Post for publication and the plaintiffs candidly admit that they did not expect compensation. The principles of equity and good conscience do not justify giving the plaintiffs a piece of the purchase price when they never expected to be paid, repeatedly agreed to the same bargain, and went into the arrangement with eyes wide open.... Quite simply, the plaintiffs offered a service and the defendants offered exposure in return, and the transaction occurred exactly as advertised. The defendants followed through on their end of the agreed-upon bargain. That the defendants ultimately profited more than the plaintiffs might have expected does not give the plaintiffs a right to change retroactively their clear, up-front agreement. That is an effort to change the rules of the game after the game has been played, and equity and good conscience require no such result.

Tasini is apparently considering appealing, which would be a waste of time and money. Any court is going to smack this lawsuit down.

In the meantime, Tasini has now branded himself as someone who has twice filed major lawsuits against publications that published his writings. It makes you wonder: what publication would want to put itself at such risk in the future?

Filed Under: contract, jonathan tasini, reporters, volunteer
Companies: huffington post

Guy Who Sued Huffington Post For Not Paying Bloggers, Doesn't Pay Bloggers Who Contribute To His Site

from the not-getting-it dept

Incredible. Jonathan Tasini, the guy who filed that ridiculous lawsuit against the Huffington Post for not paying the bloggers who volunteered to write for free, apparently has a blog where he seeks out contributions from writers... and then, no, he doesn't pay them. John Cook at Gawker called him up to ask about this, leading to the following, absolutely hilarious, exchange:

"It hasn't had any ads in several years, but there were a couple unions that did buy some advertising," he said. "They wanted to support the work I was doing." So how much of that did he kick back to commenters and readers whose e-mails he ran? "There was never a thought that we would do that," he said. "Oh, I see what you're doing. Are you comparing my little blog to the Huffington Post? That's absurd."

Except, it's not absurd. As far as I can tell, his argument is that the Huffington Post is different because it's "successful," whereas his blog is a failure, so it's okay. Interesting legal theory, though I can't see how it holds up in court.

Filed Under: blogging, jonathan tasini, slavery, unjust enrichment
Companies: huffington post

You Can't Eat Prestige

from the dumb-arguments dept

Mimi & Eunice summarize the latest Huffington Post drama.

Filed Under: jonathan tasini, lawsuit, prestige
Companies: huffington post

Dumbest Lawsuit Ever? HuffPo Sued By Bloggers Who Agreed To Work For Free... But Now Claim They Were Slaves

from the this-is-just-dumb dept

We may have set a new low for idiotic lawsuits. Jonathan Tasini, a freelance reporter who was famously involved in a lawsuit with the NY Times, concerning copyrights on a database of freelancer articles, is now suing the Huffington Post for not paying him while he wrote for it by choice. The basis of the lawsuit is the already discussed fact that a bunch of folks who blogged for the Huffington Post are stupidly upset that Arianna Huffington sold her site to AOL for $315 million, and that they didn't get any of the money. Of course, they didn't invest their money in the site. They held no equity and, most importantly, they wrote for the site for free by choice. If they didn't like the "deal", they shouldn't have done it.

In discussing the lawsuit, Tasini seems to pretty much admit that this is a petty, personal vendetta against Huffington:

"In my view, the Huffington Post's bloggers have essentially been turned into modern-day slaves on Arianna Huffington's plantation," he said. "She wants to pocket the tens of millions of dollars she reaped from the hard work of those bloggers....This all could have been avoided had Arianna Huffington not acted like the Wal-Marts, the Waltons, Lloyd Blankfein, which is basically to say, 'Go screw yourselves, this is my money.'"

In my view, Jonathan Tasini has essentially been turned into a modern day village idiot. He wants to pocket tens of millions of dollars that he did not earn, that he has no legal claim on, taking away from the hard work of Arianna Huffington and the investors and equity holders in the Huffington Post. This all could have been avoided had Jonathan Tasini not acted like the homeless guy on the corner who spits on your windshield, rubs it off "for free" and then demands money for it.

See how easy that is?

"We are going to make Arianna Huffington a pariah in the progressive community," Tasini vowed. "No one will blog for her. She'll never [be invited to] speak. We will picket her home. We're going to make it clear that, until you do justice here, your life is going to be a living hell."

Or, tons of people will continue to blog for her for the very same reason Tasini originally blogged for her: because it gives them exposure, and that's often a hell of a lot more valuable than money. In the meantime, if you're a publisher, would you ever use work by Tasini? The guy now has a history of biting back at two of the larger publications he wrote for with huge lawsuits. Why would you ever publish his work? It's a clear liability.

As for the actual legal basis for the lawsuit -- well, that's even weaker than I originally imagined. There's clearly no contractual claim here, so Tasini is going with an "unjust enrichment" claim, which I can't see withstanding even the most basic scrutiny. The entire basis of the lawsuit is destroyed by the simple fact that Tasini and others made the choice to blog for Huffington without compensation. If they didn't like it, they shouldn't have done it. Where the lawsuit gets really ridiculous is the claim that this effort "depressed the market" for Tasini's work:

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 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.

So, let me get this straight. You, of your own free will, agree to contribute work for free. Then, you file a lawsuit complaining that this is depressing the market for your work? And you expect anyone to take you seriously? If this is depressing the market for your work, try this on for size: don't work for free!

It then follows with a bizarre and totally irrelevant callout to the Constitution's copyright clause:

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.

Oh, gosh, where to start? First off, this lawsuit has nothing to do with copyright, so calling out the copyright clause is meaningless. Secondly, he's paraphrasing the Copyright clause inaccurately. Nowhere does the copyright clause say that creators should be "appropriately compensated for their contributions." It offers them the exclusive rights to those works. And Tasini gave that up when he licensed his works -- for free -- to the Huffington Post. Finally, the whole point of all of this is that the HuffPo does not say that it, alone, should be enriched. As we've pointed out before, if Tasini, or anyone else, got additional work elsewhere due to his work on HuffPo, would Tasini have paid Huffington for that? Of course not.

The claims of the lawsuit get even more ridiculous. I love this one, for example:

Defendants marketed themselves as a forum for news and ideas to get Plaintiff and the Classes to provide valuable content to it for free. In fact, TheHuffingtonPost.com intended to realize substantial revenues from the free content provided.

So... according to Tasini, no forum for news and ideas could ever possibly also be a business? Earth to Tasini: these two things are not mutually exclusive. Furthermore, at no point did Huffintgon ever hide the fact that she was running a business. If Tasini was too clueless to recognize he was contributing content to a business that was making money, then that's his own damn problem, that speaks a lot more to his own level of business cluelessness, rather than any rational legal argument.

We've seen plenty of really dumb lawsuits, but this one is really up there. I can't see a court spending much time on this one before pointing out to Tasini the obvious fact (which he ignores throughout the filing) that he chose to contribute the content of his own free will. Can you imagine the impact on the internet as a whole if Tasini actually won? It would basically uproot the entire concept of the internet. Any site that involved user contributions would have a massive liability.

And, so, the end result of this lawsuit should not be making Huffington a pariah, but making Tasini a complete pariah if you are a professional media organization.

Filed Under: jonathan tasini, slavery, unjust enrichment
Companies: huffington post