Techdirt Asks Judge To Dismiss Another Lawsuit By That Guy Who Didn't Invent Email (arstechnica.com)

Three months ago Shiva Ayyadurai won a $750,000 settlement from Gawker (after they'd already gone bankrupt). He'd argued Gawker defamed him by mocking Ayyadurai's claim he'd invented email, and now he's also suing Techdirt founder Michael Masnick -- who is not bankrupt, and is fighting back. Long-time Slashdot reader walterbyrd quotes Ars Technica: In his motion, Masnick claims that Ayyadurai "is seeking to use the muzzle of a defamation action to silence those who question his claim to historical fame." He continues, "The 14 articles and 84 allegedly defamatory statements catalogued in the complaint all say essentially the same thing: that Defendants believe that because the critical elements of electronic mail were developed long before Ayyadurai's 1978 computer program, his claim to be the 'inventor of e-mail' is false"...

The motion skims the history of e-mail and points out that the well-known fields of e-mail messages, like "to," "from," "cc," "subject," "message," and "bcc," were used in ARPANET e-mail messages for years before Ayyadurai made his "EMAIL" program. Ayyadurai focuses on statements calling him a "fake," a "liar," or a "fraud" putting forth "bogus" claims. Masnick counters that such phrases are "rhetorical hyperbole" meant to express opinions and reminds the court that "[t]he law provides no redress for harsh name-calling."
The motion calls the lawsuit "a misbegotten effort to stifle historical debate, silence criticism, and chill others from continuing to question Ayyadurai's grandiose claims." Ray Tomlinson has been dead for less than a year, but in this fascinating 1998 article recalled testing the early email protocols in 1971, remembering that "Most likely the first message was QWERTYIOP."

Comments

A kook and snake oil vendor

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

One look at his website , it is clear this guy is a simple kook, hawking "ginger can cure cancer" or "yoga improves your SAT score" stuff. His claim to fame rests on the "inventor of email" and that claim is his meal ticket.

He cleverly won against a bankrupt company, which probably did not show up in court. He does not really have to win against TechDirt or anyone. He has already acquired enough blind followers who would shut out contradictory information, who are in the alternative facts realm. So he is in a no lose proposition. Win, he gets money and more credence. Lose, he would go back to "how big companies in big bad USA had stolen his invention and used high power and money to shut out a poor Indian immigrant". Either way his meal ticket is safe.

So he is going sue me now? For defaming his character?

Re:Shiva Ayyadurai is a fraud.

[MightyMartian]

His all argument is basically based on semantics. Basically, when he was a teenager, he wrote a program called "EMAIL", and that was the first messaging system called "EMAIL", except that it wasn't, previous systems had been referred to as "e-mail". At any rate, he then asserts that because his system was called "email" and he can't find anyone who called previous systems "email", that not only is he the first to develop a messaging system with that name, but apparently the first to develop a messaging system with those features. It's a semantic wordplay feeding into a conflation fallacy, because the features of his program already existed by 1975-76.

He's a kind of IP troll save that he's bereft of any actual IP. At this point he really is a kook in the classic vein, trying to salvage a reputation he never really had.