SWAT Team Shows Up In Ferguson, Detains Reporters Live Tweeting Their Actions

from the incredible dept

We’ve been debating internally whether or not to cover the mess that is currently going on in Ferguson, Missouri. There has been plenty of attention paid to the protests and the failures by police there — and we frequently cover problems with police, as well as the militarization of police, which was absolutely on display in Ferguson (if you’ve been under a rock, police killed an unarmed teenager there last week, leading to protests over the past few days — and the police have been handling the situation… poorly, to say the least). However, the situation was changing so rapidly, it wasn’t entirely clear what to cover. The pictures from Ferguson of a very militarized police force were disturbing, and we’ve been thinking about writing something on that (and we may still). However, this evening, things got even more ridiculous, as not only did the SWAT team show up, but it then arrested two of the reporters who had been covering the events: Wesley Lowery of the Washington Post and Ryan Reilly of the Huffington Post. Both had been vital in getting out the story of what was happening on the street.

Here are a few of their tweets (prior to being arrested):

I counted 70+ SWAT officers. Guns trained on crowds. Insanity. pic.twitter.com/stev2G6v4b

— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) August 13, 2014

Overkill in #Ferguson. Officer won't answer my question about why this is needed. pic.twitter.com/iSPsP1Rxa1

— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) August 13, 2014

This exchange-> RT @AntonioFrench: State Senator asks the #Ferguson police chief if she's going to be gassed again. https://t.co/bXTjTbc7kM

— Wesley Lowery (@WesleyLowery) August 13, 2014

And then, soon after those and other tweets, another reporter, Jon Swaine from the Guardian, reported that he saw two reporters detained by police in a McDonalds:

Two reporters just cuffed and put in cop can outside Ferguson McDonald's where @WesleyLowery said he and @ryanjreilly were working

— Jon Swaine (@jonswaine) August 13, 2014

Lowery and Reilly each had live tweeted the police entering the McDonald’s, followed by a long silence from their accounts:

Police come into McD where me and @ryanjreilly working. Try to kick everyone out.

— Wesley Lowery (@WesleyLowery) August 13, 2014

SWAT just invade McDonald's where I'm working/recharging. Asked for ID when I took photo. pic.twitter.com/FOIsMnBwHy

— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) August 13, 2014

A fourth reporter on the scene, Matt Pearce of the LA Times, contacted the police chief about the situation, who was apparently surprised at the turn of events and said he’d order them released:

I just called Ferguson police chief to ask about @WesleyLowery and @ryanjreilly, told him what I knew. His response: "Oh, God."

— Matt Pearce (@mattdpearce) August 14, 2014

I just talked to the Ferguson chief again about Wes and Ryan. "I told them to release them," he said of the riot command.

— Matt Pearce (@mattdpearce) August 14, 2014

Ferguson chief tells me @WesleyLowery and @ryanjreilly's arresters were "probably somebody who didn't know better."

— Matt Pearce (@mattdpearce) August 14, 2014

Soon after, both Lowery and Reilly tweeted about their experiences, which were not exactly pleasant.

Officers slammed me into a fountain soda machine because I was confused about which door they were asking me to walk out of

— Wesley Lowery (@WesleyLowery) August 14, 2014

Detained, booked, given answers to no questions. Then just let out

— Wesley Lowery (@WesleyLowery) August 14, 2014

Also Ryan Reilly of Huff Po. Assaulted and arrested

— Wesley Lowery (@WesleyLowery) August 14, 2014

@ryanjreilly and @wesleyLowery have been arrested for "not packing their bags quick enough" at McD's #Ferguson

— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) August 14, 2014

Unfortunately my last Vine featuring the officer who assaulted me was deleted when other my phone died.

— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) August 14, 2014

I’m sure that we’ll have more on this whole thing, but as GideonsTrumpet notes, Lowery and Reilly were technically detained, not arrested, “which is far more insidious” because there’s no accountability. No charges to challenge. Nothing. It’s just a way to silence the press who were diligently getting the word out there on what they were doing.

There are all sorts of very questionable activities going on in Ferguson, including intimidation and threats against the protestors exercising their right to assembly and free speech. Detaining reporters in the middle of that is just the latest in a long string of “fuck your constitutional rights” by the (very heavily militarized) police down there.

Filed Under: arrests, assembly, detention, ferguson, free speech, freedom of the press, journalism, michael brown, police, protests, ryan reilly, swat teams, wesley lowery
Companies: huffington post, washington post

HuffPo Columnist: I Infringe, So All Broadband Users Must Pay A New Piracy Tax

from the here-we-go-again dept

We’ve talked time and time again about the pipe dream on some fronts (mostly the entertainment industry) that you should tax broadband connections to give them the money they so justly deserve as victims of new business realities they repeatedly refused to acknowledge. It’s effectively a “you must be a criminal tax,” and despite being an immensely bad idea, it has obviously seen passage in numerous countries in the form of German levies on things like solid state drives and Canada’s tax on blank media. Fortunately here in the States, efforts to push these taxes on broadband users or universities run into strong opposition.

Most people understand that letting the entertainment industry tax everybody for the behavior of a few people simply makes no coherent sense. Except apparently for “musician and freelance writer” Chris Peak, who in at attempt at humor over at the Huffington Post proudly proclaims that he thinks it would be a nifty idea if all broadband subscribers had to pay a monthly fine for the behaviors of other people. Peak begins by proudly admitting he pirates, tossing around some of the usual arguments buried under said attempted humor (it’s “stealing!” and “bands and musicians have essentially given up on selling music!”), and reaches the point where he asks all broadband subscribers to pay more money for no good reason:

“The fix? There is a fix. And it could work. Tax me. Tax for me the amount of bandwidth I use. Tax me each month, then earmark the tax for the film and music industry. Collect whatever percentage off of that tax you want. Enter into an anti-piracy agreement with both the RIAA and MPAA, and distribute the tax as fairly as possible. It would be a difficult task to allocate the tax to the effected artists and software developers, but there are widely available lists, updated daily and weekly, of the most pirated albums, programs, and movies.”

Because it’s not like once those taxes are imposed they’ll endlessly shoot skyward, completely detached from any real-world financial realities, right? If only we had real-world examples of that to show Peak how awful this idea is. Fortunately, ISPs and the entertainment industry are both known for transparency and accurate math, so it’s not like they’ll try to expand and abuse such a levy at every conceivable opportunity, right? It’s also not like entertainment industry middlemen have a long history of taking this kind of money and ensuring they get the lion’s share of it, right? Peak’s idea is fool proof!

The author then cries a little bit about his inability to adapt to a new business paradigm he pretty clearly doesn’t understand:

“I anticipate in the very near future my own music being completely stolen from me, pirated, and offered for free for trade between my fans. Fans are great. I wish I had more (for self-esteem issues). But that music that you kind of stole from me… I spent years writing, years recording, and years begging and borrowing and spending my life’s savings on, hoping that I would find enough fans to buy my music. Because I kind of do this for a living and need to support myself. Get it?”

Got it. Surely the best possible way of building your admittedly-small fan base will be to call them thieves and impose an entitlement fee on top of every broadband connection in the nation, while demonstrating you have limited skills at adaptation. Stardom awaits!

Filed Under: broadband, chris peak, mpaa, piracy, riaa
Companies: huffington post

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

HuffPost Moderates Comments To Please Advertisers [Updated: Or Not]

from the that-doesn't-actually-help-advertisers dept

Update: After hearing from a few people at Huffington Post, it appears that the original explanation from Isaf was unclear, and led us to believe they were moderating comments based on advertiser preferences. However, Huffington Post has now clarified that they use the same AI just to determine how to post ads on certain content — and that’s what Isaf meant with his remarks. Not that they moderate comments based on advertiser preferences.

We’ve been somewhat excited that we’re rapidly approaching one million total comments on Techdirt. We thought it was quite a nice milestone. But we feel a bit small to learn that the Huffington Post already has over 70 million comments just this year alone. Over at Poynter, Jeff Sonderman has a fascinating interview with the site’s director of community, Justin Isaf, about how they manage all those comments. Apparently they have a staff of 30 full time comment moderators, helped along by some artificial intelligence (named Julia) from a company they bought just for this technology.

Now, obviously, sites have lots of different philosophies on moderating comments. Our own is pretty open. We have a spam filter that tries to cut out obvious spam (of which we get about 1,000 per day, last I checked) and other than that comments are basically unmoderated. We do have a system that allows the community to vote on funny and insightful comments (which we then round up in a weekly “best of” post). We also, just recently, introduced our first word/last word feature, which lets the community promote certain comments. Finally the community can also “report” comments they find problematic, which then minimizes those comments, though they remain available for anyone to see with one click. We’ve found that this system of trusting the community works pretty damn well overall.

HuffPo, on the other hand, between the technology and the moderators, seems more focused on nudging the conversation themselves. I can understand and respect that choice, but there was one detail that struck me as a bit questionable:

I’m a big fan of having machines help us with the lower level tasks, freeing up time, resources and brain power for more interesting and complex tasks. Julia [the artificial intelligence system that HuffPo owns] takes that a few steps further and helps us with a lot of other aspects of HuffPost in addition to helping weed out abusive members, including identifying intelligent conversations for promotion, and content that is a mismatch for our advertisers. She has allowed us to do a lot more with a lot less.

(Note: see update at the top). I recognize that these are all advertising businesses, but I’m a bit surprised to see HuffPo so blatantly admit that they moderate comments if they’re “a mismatch for our advertisers.” I’ve seen plenty of sites say they’ll moderate inappropriate commentary, but leave reasonable commentary alone even if it’s critical. But HuffPo is basically saying that if advertisers aren’t likely to like the comments, they may moderate them. It’s their system, and they can do what they want with that, but personally, that makes me feel uncomfortable. We’ve always tried to promote the fact that our own community is very opinionated (and not shy about it) when we’ve spoken to advertisers, and we use that as a way of explaining why things they do should be authentic and real, rather than forced and phony. And, because of that, we’d like to think that we’re able to drive more interesting engagement. If you leave open the possibility of moderating comments that advertisers won’t like, that seems to only encourage bogus and annoying advertising, since marketers may never learn that people don’t actually like that kind of thing.

In the end, HuffPo’s position is obviously self-serving, even as they pretend that it’s best for advertisers. What they may end up doing is hiding the fact that the advertisements are bad, rather than improving the quality of the advertising. Now, obviously, I’m sure AOL does quite fine with HuffPo’s ad selling (and they’re a hell of a lot bigger than us), but it still struck me as interesting to see the company so blatantly admit how it reacts to content their advertisers might think is “a mismatch.”

Filed Under: advertisers, comments, moderation
Companies: aol, huffington post

AOL Threatens Blogger With Copyright Infringement Charge… For Doing The Exact Same Thing AOL Has Done On A Large Scale

from the shameful dept

There have been plenty of accusations made against AOL’s the Huffington Post concerning its habit of “over aggregating” content from other sites. While, personally, I think people who accuse HuffPo of being just an aggregator are overreacting on two separate issues (one: HuffPo does a ton of actual reporting also and two: HuffPo’s aggregating adds value in its own way), it would be pretty damn hypocritical for AOL to then threaten another blogger for doing exactly the same thing that HuffPo does, wouldn’t it?

Enter, Maryland Juice. A local Maryland blog, which recently had a post about some happenings in Montgomery County, which included relatively large excerpts of parts of an article from Patch, another property owned by AOL. It also included an image from the article. The Maryland Juice article included a significant amount of commentary about the article and, in particular, the photo, which was used to illustrate the point (that it was not a representative sample of county residents at the local meeting). And, yet… AOL lawyers sent a cease and desist letter:

As owner of the Content, AOL has the obligation to prevent the improper use of its proprietary material. Before pursuing any additional avenues to remove the Infringing Content, we are demanding that MarylandJuice.com take immediate steps to remove Patch’s image and either 1) display no more than a 1-2 sentence snippet of this Content, with credit explicitly given as well as a link back to the full article available at http://wheatonmd. patch.com/articles/proposed-rule-change-for-accessory-apartments-meets-opposition ; or 2) remove and disable access to all Infringing Content, and agree to never repost or use the Infringing Content or any other AOL Content, absent compliance with the third-party use guidelines identified above.

David, the Maryland Juice blogger, explains how excerpting, discussing and linking is all part of being neighborly online, and tells AOL to shove off, claiming fair use. Of course, you know who should know an awful lot about this kind of thing? Yeah, AOL and HuffPo. You see, a few years ago, when HuffPo tried to do its own “hyper local site,” it was accused of doing more or less the exact same thing (but with less commentary, and more copying):

And seeding HuffPo Chicago is a scheme whereby the publication takes some — in many cases all — of the content from another site, with a link back to the original.

The result is quick and easy traffic for the new Chicago edition, since the publication ends up catching some Google searches for keywords contained in the (Chicago-related) articles it takes. HuffPo already has good Google PageRank, so its own version of the content floats to the top of the results, even though it was not the original source.

HuffPo‘s justification, at least when the publication was pulling this crap with us, taking the entirety of our RSS feeds, was that the reprinted posts were good promotion, since they included (a totally buried) backlink to the original content on our site.

But, apparently, when someone does it to AOL, it’s no longer okay? Now that’s hypocritical.

Filed Under: aggregation, chicago, fair use, linking, maryland, maryland juice
Companies: aol, huffington post, patch

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

National Writers Union Drops Huffington Post Boycott After Discovering That No One Cared

from the duh dept

Back in March, we thought it was pretty silly that the Newspaper Guild and the National Writers Union were calling for a boycott of the Huffington Post, because some of the writers who had agreed to post on the site for free no longer liked the deal. As we said at the time, if you think that writing for free undermines your profession, you have a pretty simple solution: don’t do it. But don’t agree to write for free and then bitch about how it’s unfair. In the end, we suspected that the same reasons why people had written for the Huffington Post in the first place (in order to share their thoughts to a wider audience) would continue to win out.

It appears that is absolutely the case. The National Writers Union has now admitted that it’s dropped the boycott, because, well, no one cared. What’s amusing is that rather than quietly dropping it, they actually put out a press release saying they were “withdrawing the boycott” which almost no one paid attention to in the first place.

Filed Under: free, journalism
Companies: aol, huffington post, national writers union, newspaper guild

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