Whether or not the new class action suit against Huffington Post by more than 100 of its unpaid bloggers succeeds, glare of publicity around it could cause problems between all content sites and their unpaid contributors. Especially where contributors can smell the money and leap to conclusions of unfairness.I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve been in the paid content and intellectual property industry for 25 years… long enough to smell smoke where there could be fire. In my opinion, publishers who should take safeguard measures now are those that feature contributed content, such as unpaid columnists, bloggers, and recorded webinar speakers, who are:- About to add a paywall, or have added a paywall in the last year,- or, considering M&A (buying or selling a publication).What action should you take? Dig out all your contributor contracts, make sure you have a signed one for every piece of content, and have a lawyer eyeball your agreement templates. Yes, you should have written intellectual property agreements for everybody who has created content that’s published on your site, even if they did it for free, even if it gave them publicity or other benefits, even if they paid you to publish it (in the case of a sponsored on-demand webinar perhaps.)Sometimes the contract will be a document, such as an Unpaid Speaker Agreement that must be signed and scanned or faxed back for your files. Sometimes the contract may be an Intellectual Property usage and rights clause included on your site’s legal info page. Sometimes it may be a special checkbox on the online form that you ask contributors – such as contest entrants who contribute content as part of their entry – to check as part of their submission.(Note: Subscription Site Insider Members can find samples of these sorts of legal documents in our Legal Department. That said, you should still check with your own lawyers prior to implementation.)In all cases, I’ve found implementation and administration are 80% of the battle. It’s one thing to get all the contracts and forms added to the site and handed out to editorial managers for use. It’s another thing to make sure they actually use them and that the contracts themselves are stored someplace safe where a server crash, changing platforms, or management forgetfulness can’t lose them. Filing things properly away is easy to forget in the rush of daily business. At least for me it is…..