My guess is that the writers of the top pages, who will now make less money off those pages, are (considering) suing for the future revenue they would have made under the old payment structure.
They're probably particularly pissed now that those pages have aged in Google, and proven their value (writer took the risk).
Jason mentions how the old payment structure led to a "happy few and frustrated many." I have a hard time believing there's enough revenue from the contributions of the few to significantly improve the compensation for the many.
You would think they would have just suspended any new revenue share pages. So they go people writing for them under the pretense of residual income, got the content and had it updated for them then removed any benefit for the content producer.
One things for sure, the already bad quality of mahalo will get even worse when these writers who were motivated to maintain quality articles by residual income are gone.
Seems strange to appear now as its last month news..they been trying to get it noticed on Digg for about what 25 days?
But from I understand about the way the TOS read they do not have a case to stand on..
I had a chance to sign as writer but after reading the TOS realized that they could change program at any time without any guarantees to writers and thus declined.
But, however that is true with any writing content contract About.com, etc..
Yeah, law firms do this all the time. They sniff that they MAY be the slightest hint of a lawsuit and then they put out press releases and run Google ads trolling for clients. It's also sort of a litmus test to see if they can get some media attention (even though the lawsuit barely exists) which in turn generates more clients, and negotiating power.
Remember, in America you can sue anyone for anything so for a lawfirm to not even file, only be retained, says a lot.
Love how they advise strongly against reviewing whatever this is with your own lawyer saying "getting [your] own attorney is much more risky and exposed."
Usually when someone you don't know tells you you shouldn't talk to your own attorney, it means you should talk to your own attorney.
Otherwise, the information here is a bit sparse...