Liberal journalism blog aggregator and opinion site The Huffington Post was sued in a class action in 2011 on the grounds that the blog had failed to pay the more than 9,000 bloggers who had provided content for the blog over a period of years. In submitting copy to The Huffington Post, bloggers knew they would not be paid, but presumably they valued the professional/political/personal exposure afforded by publication.
The law aside, does The Huffington Post have a moral duty to compensate the bloggers who knowingly gave away their content when that content subsequently proved to be instrumental in building Huffington into a valuable property? Explain. Do you feel a duty to pay others when you are the beneficiary of “unjust enrichment?” Explain.