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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."
a mechanism to send canned pork products electronically.
When did UUCP get store and forward messaging ?
When did DECnet get mail support ?
...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.
That's because Slashdot has just become a clone of HackerNews front page.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
For copyright infringement on the use of the word "Spam".
And more importantly, he didn't invent e-mail.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
It's not even an early implementation. Messaging had been around for two decades before he came along, and the initial RFCS laying out the basic features of the Internet mail system we know today were written up and implemented four or five years before his program. That he wrote an email system isn't in dispute, that had any influence on other mail systems, in particular ARPANET email networks, is the issue, and the answer is no, he inspired nothing, and until his absurd claims were made public, no one had any even heard of his software.
At best he's a fantasist, at worst he's a shameless liar trying to take credit for things he had nothing to do with.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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.
Ayyadurai is right-wing, genius. They hate free speech at least as much as the left do.
One of the claims from this fraud (or perhaps just idiot) is that one have to apply the term email for it to count - and I'm not joking. He probably did do a system that provided email functionality with the expected features to a limited group of people (where he worked on the system), that's not inventing the thing though.
He never claimed that. What he did claim is also an enormous exaggeration but whatever...
I have some I could send him however.
I call it lazy reporting and/or lack of technical savvy. Reading articles on science in the mainstream media sometimes it can be appalling as to what is being written.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
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.
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.
Al Gore actually said that he helped create the internet through passing legislation, etc. It was just one of the key legislative accomplishments that he listed. It was re-worded to look like he was claiming that he had invented the Internet and the meme stuck. The fact that the meme still exists today, when there is ample evidence that Al Gore never made the claim, shows a lack of critical thinking in the general population.
I guess PT Barnum was right: "There is a sucker born every minute"
PS: PT Barnum is attributed to the saying in common knowledge but historians have been unable to find any proof that he actually said it.
Why?
Kahn and Cerf detailed Gore's contribution back when this absurd meme first appeared:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/10/02/net_builders_kahn_cerf_recognise/
If you don't know who they are look them up.
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.
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?
At times it's hard to tell whether Ayyadurai is just a liar, or if he really is out of his mind. I suspect he lies somewhere in between; that he started out peddling an inflated claim, and when called out on it, started getting more and more hyperbolic, in the hopes of shouting down critics. His statements on Tomlinson were absurd and hateful, particularly in light of the fact that the RFCs are all dated, so we have a very solid chronology of how ARPANET email evolved during the 1970s.
I think he's a litigious kook, or as we would have called him back in the day; a net kook.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Give the guy a little credit for creating a working email _system_ in an era where email hadn't proliferated very far
Define "proliferated very far". Many other computer systems had email systems. The problem back then is that theses systems didn't often communicate with each other. For example, ARPANET extended across the country by 1977 had email. This guy invented an email program that worked at one university from what I can tell.
"V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai is not a member of the MIT faculty and did not invent email. In 1980 he created a small-scale electronic mail system used within University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, but this could not send messages outside the university and included no important features missing from earlier systems"
From what I know from him, he never claimed he created electronic messaging.
These are his claims. Judge for yourself.
He just thinks he created a more useful version of it and that the term email can be attributed to him. That's his opinion, so what?
Well he sued someone who disagrees with that opinion for libel. By your own argument should you sue someone for a different opinion? One of the things not mentioned is that he sued one of authors for re-posting comments from other users in an article. That's not remotely how libel should work.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I give the guy credit for writing an email program. That's it. His claim isn't that he wrote an email program in the late 70s. His claim is that he "invented Email", conflating the copyrighting of his dead-end messaging program with the email system that we see today. He had nothing to do with ARPANET email, no one who worked on those systems ever heard of him, so he did nothing innovative, and certainly nothing that assisted in the development of Internet email. His claims are rubbish, and when cornered, he plays a bait-and-switch game between his copyrighted program used by very few people and the email systems now used by hundreds of millions of people.
Whatever credit he gets for writing a messaging system is wiped out by his lies and attacks on those who actually did develop the email system we have today.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Steve Jobs and Wozniak are praised as gods having created the computer!
Umm, no, nobody says that.
Give the guy a little credit for creating a working email _system_ in an era where email hadn't proliferated very far.
I have no problem with that -- what the guy actually did was good. That's not the problem. The problem is that he insists that he invented email -- to the point of even taking things to court -- when that's a laughable thing to insist on.
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.
You don't know the difference between a mini and a micro computer. Why should we pay any attention to your opinion?
The first micro was an Altair, it was about 2 years before the Apple 1. Neither was anything like turnkey. IIRC the first turnkey, runs out of the box microcomputer, was the Pet.
Give this guy credit? No. He lost all respect when he hired a lawyer to advance his lie. Until then he was just wrong, after, he is a prolapsed festering asshole. If you meet him, kick him square in the nuts as hard as you can.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Al Gore actually said that he helped create the internet
Yes, he did. And my thesaurus says that 'create' is a synonym for 'invent'.
You do know that dot on the forehead is actually their shutdown button, right? :D
Just can't recall if that was South Park, Family Guy, or American Dad (and can't be arsed to go look it up right now). :)
This space unintentionally left blank.
Steve Jobs and Wozniak are praised as gods having created the computer! It's ridiculous you know, because they reused past knowledge. Even in the mini-computer front, there were people already doing it.
The way you put it sounds like you half-believe it yourself. It is not ridiculous because "they re-used past knowledge", it is ridulous because computers were in use before they were born. Actually, it is more common for people to belive that Gates invented the computer :
https://answers.yahoo.com/ques...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/new...
Give the guy a little credit for creating a working email _system_ in an era where email hadn't proliferated very far.
Sorry, you've already blown your own credit away (see above)
What I think about whenever I see any mention of the non-inventor of e-mail: "He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament."
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.
Because he wants money. Do you know any Indians?
No he did not. At best he copyrighted a program called "EMAIL" however he was far from the first person with the concept.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Well, if you're going with that expansive definition of "invent", then Gore was correct when he said that.
My question is not about the inflated claim of inventing email, my question would be was he the first
to come up with specific parts of the modern email system such as subject headers? If not then who did?
Well, if you're going with that expansive definition of "invent", then Gore was correct when he said that.
Sure, if you buy into the proposition that he "helped create" the Internet. I saw the original 1999 interview with Wolf Blitzer, and what he said was, "I took the initiative in creating the Internet." That wording has always made me cringe a little (but of course, he was running for President at the time); what he should have said would have been something like, "I played a leading role in fostering the development of the Internet in a legislative and economic sense." Or, if you want to be snarkier, "I helped transform the Internet from a tool for academics and scientists into a medium that would eventually bring us Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon."
It was Family Guy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Life isn't like a box of chocolates. It's more like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow.
It would be nice, just to see the judiciary backlash if nothing else.
IMO the judge took the weiner approach by saying he couldn't prove Ayyadurai's claim one way nor the other, despite RFC 561 Standardizing Network Mail Headers being published in 1973 - well before the "late 1970's" that Ayyadurai claims he invented email.
Read the judgment. On your first question, no he didn't. Just looking at the RFCs pertaining to ARPANET message formatting and transmission prior to his program, you can see that pretty much the essentials of the email systems we use today were sketched out by the mid-70s, but in reality, there were many different mail systems dating back over a decade prior to RFC 561.
If there was an inventory of modern email, it would be Roy Tomlinson, he was the primary developer of RFC 561, but as he made clear over the years, he did not develop email at all, and it was a collective by many groups over several years. But I would credit Tomlinson as being one of the primary developers of the ARPANET network mail system, which is the direct ancestor of Internet email, the chief innovations coming after that time being UUCP and SMTP which standardized the means to of transmitting those messages between multiple servers on local and wide area networks. Ayyadurai had absolutely nothing to do with any of this work, and no one has produced even a hint that Tomlinson or any of the other developers of the ARPANET network mail system ever heard of him, or based any of their work off of anything he did.
He wrote a mail system used for a while at one institution. It was an evolutionary dead end that inspired no one, and the fact is that those features of "email" that Ayyadurai claims were his had already been designed and rolled out. He had nothing to do with the development of ARPANET/Internet email. Full stop.
The reality is that email, like so many aspects of modern computing, was developed multiple times and in multiple ways over the years, and even the mail system we know today was the collective work of multiple individuals, building on the basic mail systems found on mainframe systems in the late 60s and early 70s, with each new RFC adding, clarifying and standardizing email functionality. In a way, there was no inventory of email, no single person you can point at and say "he did it". That was the spirit of computing at the time, and indeed is the source of the open source philosophy we have today. Nobody was developing ARPANET email to gain fame and fortune, they were engineers identifying and solving problems.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
At least APK doesn't claim he's "the Inventor of the Host File".
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I don't think it's about money at all. Ayyadurai had a fairly decent job at MIT, which he himself blew up when his grandiose claims about being "the inventor of email" got widely publicized. If anything, Ayyadurai's wildly hyperbolic claims have actually cost him dearly, and unless Thiel has been funding his lifestyle on top of his lawsuit, I can't imagine Ayyadurai is making better money than he did five years ago.
No, I think what we're dealing with here is the classic case of the self-aggrandizing kook who tried to spin a modest accomplishment (he did, after all, actually write an email program when he was 14, no mean feat at all) into some grand story of being the "inventor of EMAIL". Clearly there's an element of dishonesty here, as his whole claim is a clever conflation, but just about every netkook I've ever encountered was fairly bright, but also so self-deluded that they begin to believe the lies and half-truths they have to spin to create the illusion of support for their claims.
He's running for Senate now, so we'll see if the good people of Massachusetts want to give a litigious and abusive fantasist a job.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Bitch about it all you want, sunshine. I'm not going to quit signing my posts.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Al Gore invented AlGore-rithm, he didn't invent email.
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 did not trademark so no, he does not have a claim to the word either.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
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