• GigaOm, Thursday, April 14, 2011 11:50 AM

Is Arianna Huffington a slave owner or a crowdsourcing pioneer? GigoOm feels compelled to pose the question now that one of Huffington's many blogger minions has filed a class-action lawsuit accusing her of "unjust enrichment" for profiting from the labor of others. Unfortunately for Huffington, the blogger behind the lawsuit, Jonathan Tasini, is a union leader, and settled a not-dissimilar case with The New York Times for $18 million back in 2001.

What's more, "Tasini ... isn't the only one to pull out the strike talk," GigaOm notes. "The Newspaper Guild endorsed the idea of a strike against the site shortly after it was acquired by AOL, saying 'working for free does not benefit workers and undermines quality journalism,' and that writers were being asked to 'honor this electronic picket line.'" In essence, what Tasini and others are saying, according to GigaOm, is that while The Huffington Post may not have a legal duty to pay bloggers, it has some kind of moral obligation to do so in light of its massive payday.

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