Slashdot Mirror
Judge Dismisses 'Inventor of Email' Lawsuit Against Techdirt (arstechnica.com)
A federal judge in Massachusetts has dismissed a libel lawsuit filed earlier this year against tech news website Techdirt. From a report: The claim was brought by Shiva Ayyadurai, who has controversially claimed that he invented e-mail in the late 1970s. Techdirt (and its founder and CEO, Mike Masnick) has been a longtime critic of Ayyadurai and institutions that have bought into his claims. "How The Guy Who Didn't Invent Email Got Memorialized In The Press & The Smithsonian As The Inventor Of Email," reads one Techdirt headline from 2012. One of Techdirt's commenters dubbed Ayyadurai a "liar" and a "charlatan," which partially fueled Ayyadurai's January 2017 libel lawsuit. In the Wednesday ruling, US District Judge F. Dennis Saylor found that because it is impossible to define precisely and specifically what e-mail is, Ayyadurai's "claim is incapable of being proved true or false."
Shiva Ayyadurai is a butthead.
Shiva Ayyadurai sues the judge for saying he didn't invent email.
a mechanism to send canned pork products electronically.
When did UUCP get store and forward messaging ?
When did DECnet get mail support ?
I think it's surprising that slashdot has this before Techdirt.
It's kind of mindboggling how many institutions not only bought his less than half-truth (quarter-truth?), but haven't even tried to rectify the situation after it's become clear that all he did was create one of the many early implementations that didn't even contain features that hadn't been implemented by someone else before him. Maybe these institutions think they've got their reputation to protect, but not acknowledging that this charlatan is still going to hurt their reputation.
It's definitely good to see that the judge could be convinced of the rather obvious truth of the matter, but still a shame he refused to invoke anti-SLAPP laws that would have forced him to pay their legal bill.
...Since it was actually I who invented email.
For anybody interested, and for some Streisand-Effecting, here is the article in question: How The Guy Who Didn't Invent Email Got Memorialized In The Press & The Smithsonian As The Inventor Of Email.
Enjoy!
What's tricky is defining "invention".
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
claimed that he invented e-mail in the late 1970s.
Err, isn't RFC 561 trivially prior art?
Here's the example from the RFC, which also provides some BNF style formal syntax:
From: White at SRI-ARC
Date: 24 JUL 1973 1527-PDT
Subject: Multi-Site Journal Meeting Announcement
NIC: 17996
At 10 AM Wednesday 25-JULY there will be a meeting
to discuss a Multi-Site Journal in the context of
the Utility. Y'all be here.
1973. That's certainly before the "late 1970s".
For copyright infringement on the use of the word "Spam".
Al Gore - the self-proclaimed inventor of the internet - had planned on suing everyone after milking his carbon-credit scheme for all it's worth.
According to Wikipedia:
> In March 2016, Ayyadurai alleged that the overlooking of his achievements was a result of racism and a conspiracy between mainstream media and the military-industrial complex, particularly Raytheon where Tomlinson worked on ARPANET. After Tomlinson's death, Ayyadurai told The Hindu that he believed that news outlets retracted their stories about him because "Raytheon advertises in publications like the Huffington Post and CNN" and that if he were "a white guy and had a copyright for email, I would have my photo on every stamp in the world." The day after Tomlinson's death, Ayyadurai tweeted: "I'm the low-caste, dark-skinned, Indian, who DID invent #email. Not Raytheon, who profits for war & death.Their mascot Tomlinson dies a liar"
trademark / Patent / Copyright trolls must die and loser pays as well.
"E-mail" is not a hard term to define. It's just "electronic mail". You can split email into "local on one computer" and "distributed across a network", since those were created separately, but it really isn't that complicated. There really is something called "truth", it'd be nice to acknowledge that sometimes.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
Slashdot broke the news over a decade ago that only elderly South Koreans use email
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rf...
Network Working Group J. White
Request for Comments: 524 SRI-ARC
NIC: 17140 13 June 1973
A Proposed Mail Protocol
AUTHOR'S INTENT
This is the document I offered in (15146,) to write. It's a proposed
specification for handling mail in the Network -- a Mail Protocol....
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rf...
RFC # 561 Abhay Bhushan (AKB) MIT-DMCG
NIC # 18516 Ken Pogran (KP) MIT-MULTICS
Ray Tomlinson (RST) BBN-TENEX
Jim White (JEW) SRI-ARC
5 September 73
Standardizing Network Mail Headers
One of the deficiences of the current FTP mail protocol is that
it makes no provision for the explicit specification of such
header information as author, title, and date. Many systems
send that information, but each in a different format. One
fairly serious result of this lack of standardization is that
it's next to impossible for a system or user program to
intelligently process incoming mail.
Al Gore should totally sue this guy.
"Where'd that door come from?"
- Shiva Ayyadurai's ass
Ayyadurai is right-wing, genius. They hate free speech at least as much as the left do.
How much this site sucks now. The threads were so much better then.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Go on. Define email.
Given that it was an evolution of a continued set of RFCs and standards that slowly and gradually became what you call an email when you send it today, I'm keen to see if you can define an email as something unique that actually correctly incorporates the history that went into its making.
Tip: No one invented email.
India.
So all the H-1B Sumdogs owe me 10% of their salary. Pay up or be sued.
Corporatism != Free Market
You are conflating freedom of speech with freedom from consequences. The left absolutely believes strongly in free speed. Where have they ever proposed a law to stop people from speaking about anything?
If you want to criticize many on the left because they have no patience for white supremacy that is a different discussion. If you want to criticize them for being too quick to consider an issue about race that's fine and you would have honest ground to stand on. But to characterize them as not supporting free speech is Alex Jones level of delusional. The same goes with the characterization that they are violent just because a few opportunistic assholes show up at rallies.
Here's a hint, the vast majority of people on the left support their local police just like people on the right. Anything screaming obscenities at the police are doing so not for political ideology. Do you really think NWA had anything to do with politics or was it more a reflection of their own experiences?
Good for TechDirt that he didn't file it in East Texas - whoever pays the court the most money there always wins.
He *may* have coined the term 'email'. Maybe.
BUT - conflating his email client named 'EMAIL' with the invention of the technology behind email is conflating a machine named 'PhotoCopier' with inventing the technology behind photocopying.
What's tricky is defining "invention".
That depends on what the meaning of "is" is. - Bill Clinton
Where can I go to get this free speed that you speak of?
The left absolutely believes strongly in free speed.
Oh hell yeah.
V1 of Unix from 1971 had a man page for the mail command. Multics had a MAIL command. Shiva did not invent these systems that are the fundamental basis of modern email.
If Shiva claims to have coined the term email in short form or as an acronym (EMAIL) or as the name for his system, fine. But there is a big difference between coining a term and inventing something and we already have well explored this concept in society. By trying to create this stupid fantasy of his, he's just losing all his credibility and we will just ignore him.
The amazing thing is, this guy seems smart and well spoken, why would he ruin his reputation by making easily disprovable claims over such a widely used and revered technology. It's proof that you have to be careful with people and what they say, they may just be a crazy fucker.
The PLATO systems were using email, instant messaging, chat rooms, and blogs in the mid 70s (1976 for e-mail).
Along with, not much later, plasma display terminals and minimal graphics, a rudimentary GUI, and all of this getting leveraged not only for instructional courseware but games, games, games... I still play one...
Some of PLATO was shown to some guys from Xerox PARC. They knew what to do. Don Bitzer was so far ahead of the possible technology even money could not have helped. Ayyadurai should be spanked and sent to bed.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
“For in Utopia, except by previous arrangement, people do not talk together on the telephone ...
A message is sent to the station of the district in which the recipient is known to be, and there it waits until he chooses to tap his accumulated messages. And any that one wishes to repeat can be repeated. Then he talks back to the senders and dispatches any other messages he wishes."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_Like_Gods
Came with the Laurel E-Mail client in 1973.
While I'd love to jump on the "he didn't invent e-mail" bandwagon, I have to agree with the judge on this one.
The term 'email' doesn't represent one particular thing. It isn’t a brand or trademark, and is just a shortened term for ‘electronic mail’. What we know email today is just a collection of standards and protocols. It is possible to call other implementations email, and for that to still be valid. Shiva Ayyadurai invented an implementation of email, but his implementation was independent of other projects and he had no role in the definition of standards and protocols that make up email as we know it today. He was also not the first to build an electronic mail implementation.
In defamation cases, the Plaintiff has to prove that the defaming statements were false. The judge has essentially stated that there is no way he can conclusively prove that because the definition of email is actually really broad and that Techdirt's statements can be true depending on interpretation.
Now, there could be a case against Shiva Ayyadurai for Defamation, Fraudulent Misrepresentation or False Light for claiming he is 'THE inventor of email'(emphasis mine) when he is 'AN inventor of one email program'. Many others have created email implementations before him and his creation played no part in building email as we know it today. However, that would be a separate case entirely and would need to be brought by people who can represent the various creators and contributors of email as we know it today.
He invented email, a program that does email.
His game is to pretend the name of the program is the name of the class of invention it uses.
I invented the flying-car BTW, well the flying-car.exe but that's the same right?
It is mail, sent electronically as a data transmission. STOP It was invented before the pitiful asshole was born. STOP Just fucking. STOP
Long before there WAS an internet; you sent "electronic mail" via Fidonet.
The invention of email was evolved in the public domain software community.
NRRPT/RCT