AOL and Huffington Post sued by unpaid blogger (Reuters)

Tuesday, April 12, 2011 1:01 PM

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Huffington Post unfairly pocketed more than $100 meg from its complimentary bloggers when AOL Inc bought the influential programme website in February, according to a causa filed on Tuesday.

The suit, filed in borough federal court, comes two months after Arianna Huffington, co-founder of the website, oversubscribed it to AOL for $315 million.

Of that price, at least $105 meg was the estimated continuance of the website's complimentary writings, which should now be given to the bloggers, the causa says.

"The Huffington Post is null without the bloggers who created the content," said Jonathan Tasini, a one-time Huffington Post blogger who filed the meet and is hunt class-action position on behalf of the bloggers.

Part opinion and part news, the left-of-center website has to some extent relied on liberated contributions by celebrities, politicians and experts to intend traffic, motion it into a field online obligate since it started in 2005.

A spokesman for the website said he had not reviewed the lawsuit, but titled the allegations "completely baseless."

"Our bloggers apply our papers to connect and secure that their ideas and views are seen by as some grouping as possible," spokesman Mario Ruiz said.

"It's the aforementioned think hundreds of grouping go on TV shows to broadcast their views to as wide an audience as possible."

To what extent the website's sale continuance or estimated income was supported on complimentary blogs is unclear, the causa acknowledged, but it claimed the roughly 9,000 complimentary bloggers should receive their clean cut.

The causa also titled for the website to promulgation careful information on the cyberspace traffic to and from the blogs.

John Coffee Jr, a professor at New York's river University Law School, said the causa would likely be unemployed by a determine as the bloggers' decision to advance to the website was a rational one, and that the cyberspace site was within its rights to profit from the liberated content.

The case is Jonathan Tasini v Aol Inc et al, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, No. 11-cv-2472.

(Reporting by theologist Katz; redaction by Mark Egan and Lisa Von Ahn)


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