March 30 (Reuters) - AOL Inc on Friday won the dismissal of
a lawsuit by unpaid bloggers who complained they were deprived
of their fair share of the roughly $315 million that the company
paid last March to buy The Huffington Post website.
U.S. District Judge John Koeltl rejected claims by social
activist and commentator Jonathan Tasini and an estimated 9,000
other bloggers that they deserved $105 million, or about
one-third, of the purchase price.
The lawsuit contended that the work of unpaid content
providers like bloggers gave The Huffington Post much of its
value, and that the website's sale allowed co-founder Arianna
Huffington to profit at their expense. Tasini said he alone had
made 216 submissions to the website over more than five years.
But Koeltl said "no one forced" the bloggers to repeatedly
provide their work with no expectation of being paid, and said
they got what they bargained for when their works were
published.
"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," the
judge wrote.
Koeltl also dismissed claims that AOL materially misled the
bloggers about how often their works were being viewed, and how
much revenue they were generating. He dismissed the case with
prejudice, meaning it cannot be brought again.
"This is the electronic equivalent of someone writing a
letter to the editor," John Coffee, a professor at Columbia Law
School, said in an interview. "You are rewarded by publication,
not by payment."
Jeff Kurzon, a lawyer for the bloggers, said, "We are
reviewing the decision and considering our options."
AOL spokesman Mario Ruiz had no immediate comment.
The Huffington Post is a left-leaning, part-news and
part-opinion website that has since its 2005 founding relied in
part on free contributions to attract traffic. It said it had
36.2 million unique visitors in December.
Tasini was also the lead plaintiff in a landmark 2001 case
in which the U.S. Supreme Court said publishers violate
copyright law when they reproduce freelance works electronically
without first obtaining permission from copyright owners.
The case is Tasini et al v. AOL Inc et al, U.S. District
Court, Southern District of New York, No. 11-02472.
For Tasini: Jeffrey Kurzon of Kurzon LLP.
For AOL: David Kendall of Williams & Connolly.
(Reporting By Jonathan Stempel)
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