So said Samuel Johnson, or so Boswell reports. That was a couple of centuries ago and a bit. But it's still sounds very good advice to me. 'Free' is surely one of the most misused words of the twenty first century. What it usually means is... someone else pays. Or someone else gets the money, as the bloggers who made the Huffington Post what it is are just finding out.

<img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-8023" title="Screen shot 2011-04-13 at 08.40.29" src="http://davidhewson.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Screen-shot-2011-04-13-at-08.40.29.png" alt="" width="513" height="565" />

HuffPo is, of course, a highly successful phenomenon.  Created by the charismatic Arianna Huffington as a new age liberal media news and opinion service, it took the web world by storm, in America at least. What made it great, to a large extent, was the wide range of people -- nine thousand or so in all --  who were willing to write extensively for it without receiving a penny for their work.

They broke Sam Johnson's rule. They wrote for free. Oh dear.

So wonderful did HuffPo turn out to be that Arianna sold the whole shebang to the distinctly old web age and unliberal AOL in February for a staggering $315m.  Writing for Arianna for free was one thing. Writing for a big, commercial lumbering giant like AOL for free.... you see the problem?

So <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/apr/12/arianna-huffington-post-sale" target="_blank">yesterday came the inevitable: a law suit</a>. All those thousands of unpaid writers reckon that their work constituted a third of the value of HuffPo when it was sold. So they'd like their cut -- $105m please.

One of those leading the action, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Tasini" target="_blank">Jonathan Tasini</a>, says, 'Huffington bloggers have essentially been turned into modern day slaves on Arianna Huffington's plantation.'

And here's the most interesting quote of all. Describing the lawsuit as 'baseless' (aren't they always?) the site retorts, 'Our bloggers utilise our platform to connect and ensure that their ideas and views are seen by as many people as possible. It's the same reason hundreds of people go on TV shows – to broadcast their views to as wide an audience as possible.'

So never mind all the hours, the sweat, the dedication that went into those articles you wrote for HuffPo (which don't really compare with a quick five-minute off-the-cuff interview on a TV show). You got it wrong, folks. You owe <em>them</em> for printing the stuff in the first place. Just as authors owe book thieves gratitude for 'advertising' their wares to the world at large.

This should be a field day for the lawyers. I'm no expert here -- who is? But I can't help wondering... if you give something away in the first place, how can you <em>un</em>give it later?