Techdirt Asks Judge To Dismiss Another Lawsuit By That Guy Who Didn't Invent Email (arstechnica.com) 82
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."
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."
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No. You should say QWERTYUIOP and ask why the first email was sent on a keyboard missing the U key.
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Oh.
I read it as Internet over Protocol or something ;D
Let me guess... (Score:1)
Prior art (Score:5, Informative)
As far as I am aware, "666BOX" by IPSharp had all the features he's claimed and was first written in 1974. That is, to, cc, bcc, reply etc.
I'm sure others here can come up with other examples?
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Probably, but it doesn't matter... there's already enough well-known prior art out there that this guy is well into "kook" territory. More evidence that he's a kook isn't going to change his opinion. A court slapdown might, although I suspect they'll drop the case before it gets to that point.
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That's a legit option if you don't mind dragging things out. On the other hand, the sooner the lawsuit is dropped the more money they save and the sooner they can start writing about "the coward who didn't invent e-mail".
Re:Prior art (Score:5, Informative)
Ray Tomlinson invented email if you're going to pick any single person who developed the email system we know today. Ayyadurai developed some dead end email system years after the header formats were developed for Arpanet email. Ayyadurai can try to sue people all he wants but a series of RFCs beginning with RFC 561 in 1973 laid out the Arpanet email system that we still use today (though the transmission protocols have evolved since the mid-70s). That's the most frustrating part of this fruitcake's claims, since one can delve into the RFCs from the early 70s onward and see how the Internet email system evolved as new features and logic were added.
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I'm sure others here can come up with other examples?
IBM was kicking around emails on their SNA based VNET system in the mid-70s.
I dimly remember that if your "reader" (inbox) was too large, you needed to create a large temp disk, copy everything from your "A" disk to the temp disk, un-mount both, then mount the temp disk as your "A" disk, clean up your mail, then mount your "real" "A" disk as a temp disk, copy everything from the "temp" "A" disk to the "real" "A" disk, and then finally re-mount the "real" "A" disk ask the "A" disk, and then temp disk would
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The reason to name Ray Tomlinson is because the set of header fields that we consider the core of an Arpanet/Internet email message originated with him. He, unlike Ayyadurai, was a humble man who freely admitted that there had been many people working on these concepts, and that his contribution by and large was to publish an RFC that laid out those developments at that point in time (1973-75) of what Arpanet email should be or was capable of. In reality, of course, messaging systems predate even the Intern
Re: Shiva Ayyadurai is a fraud. (Score:5, Funny)
He invented computer science. Hence the word algoreithms.
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Snopes says that Snopes is reliable. Just the same way that the Bible is the word of God because the Bible says so.
Re: Snopes and reliability (Score:1)
Re: Shiva Ayyadurai is a fraud. (Score:1)
Snopes is reliable unless you like alternative facts.
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Sarcasm aside, there's also the fact that he didn't suggest he created the internet. He had a slightly awkwardly phrased statement taken out of context.
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Let's see... the only people saying Snopes is wrong are blatantly alt-right white nationalists or ultra-conservatives who dislike facts and rationality
What makes you say that? Were they at the same time making Nazi salutes and calling for the destruction of all Jews?
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True, he claimed he created the internet. But unless you think middle managers who pitch the value of a project to higher ups without being involved in the actual project create the thing, he didn't create jack shit.
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Re:Shiva Ayyadurai is a fraud. (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, it's possible that he's mildly delusional, as most of us are about beliefs about ourselves that we hold dear.
It strikes me that Ayyadurai is in a legal catch-22 situation. Let's suppose for a moment he did "invent" email. That would make him a public figure, and the legal standard used to establish defamation is "actual malice [wikipedia.org]. That's a difficult standard to meet.
I assume Ayyadurai's complaint are claims that he is a "fake" or a "liar". Suppose some random shmoe is interviewing for a job, and you tell the interviewer that he's a "liar". That is defamation, unless you have actual reason to believe he is a liar. But if you say the same thing about a politician running for office, it's NOT defamation unless you have actual reason to believe he is NOT a liar. That's because the politician is a public figure.
It seems to me nearly impossible to defame someone by calling him a liar in the context of his claiming to invent anything. His very demand to be recognized for his achievement makes him a public figure, whether that claim is true or not.
Re:Shiva Ayyadurai is a fraud. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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He's a kind of IP troll save that he's bereft of any actual IP.
Which means he's not an IP troll at all. What he is, is a glory hog. It's a bad thing to be, but not every bad thing to be is the same thing.
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I love pointing out the horrible technical errors they make in that show. For something that is supposed to be about a genius, it is amazing how much they get wrong.
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He's from Bombay so he is probably a hindu, not a muslim. Either that or he has seen some reason and become an atheist.
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So is this this decades GNAA poster?
Time will tell.
Unless that's you, Donald.
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No, the original GNAA crew actually claimed to *be* GNs. There was that movie [imdb.com]. And they were occasionally funny.
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<<---[point]............[you]--->>
indo-chimp (Score:1, Funny)
He should claim to have invented street-shitting. That'd be a lot more credible.
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Steyn resembles Ayyadurai,though. He's an attention whore who makes shit up for attention.
Re: Just like Steyn-Mann lawsuits (Score:2)
Totally
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Except Mann isn't a fraud, and no one in the scientific community actually thinks he is, and why Steyn is being sued is for comparing Mann to Jerry Sandusky. Steyn is a polemicist whose stock and trade is making outrageous statements for the hoards of like-minded who want to believe science is a lie and Muslims are all evil.
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1986 eMail.mil (Score:3)
My first eMail was in the 1980s prior to DNS. name1986@IPv4
A kook and snake oil vendor (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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Either way his meal ticket is safe
I'm not so sure, Fran Dresher could divorce him at any time.
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They weren't actually married, but apparently she's dumped him. LOL.
P.S. it's Drescher.
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Yeah my bad on the spelling....also didn't realize she dumped him this past September.
The most disgusting thing about this is that he waited till Tomlinson was dead to say that he "died a liar"
(https://twitter.com/va_shiva/status/706670699713335297) and that he was a murderer because he worked for Raytheon (but MIT is somehow immune to that, even though they can also be lumped into the military-industrial complex (http://www2.needham.k12.ma.us/nhs/cur/wwII/WWII-p1-04/brooke_p1_kss_4_1_04/home.html). Somebo
Yeah (Score:2)
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If you file a $15M lawsuit because someone hurt your feelings, you forfeit the right to be addressed as a civilized human being. Someone should hurt his feelings with a 3' section of schedule 40 black iron pipe.
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Nothing so violent. A judge should hurt his feelings by declaring him a vexatious litigant. That's the appropriate route for those who use (and abuse) the court system for idiotic and abusive lawsuits.
But I think Ayyadurai is in the "there's no such thing as bad publicity" department. Doubtless he's thrilled that his claims are being talked about again.
Easy solution (Score:1)
Kill him, put his head on a pike. Can't sue anyone when you're dead, can you? Leave the head for anyone who feels like it to use it as urinal. Problem solved.
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