Judge Dismisses 'Inventor of Email' Lawsuit Against Techdirt (arstechnica.com) 127
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."
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Al Gore invented AlGore-rithm, he didn't invent email.
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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). :)
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It was Family Guy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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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.
e-mail (Score:1)
a mechanism to send canned pork products electronically.
What about UUCP and DECnet ? (Score:1)
When did UUCP get store and forward messaging ?
When did DECnet get mail support ?
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In 1981, MULTICS had e-mail which was separate from the instant messages. It was not limited to that machine, because I had to enable it for one of my students who used it to e-mail someone on another MULTICS system in Phoenix.
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MULTICS had email in 1965. It was written by Noel Morris and Tom Van Vleck, though it was designed a little earlier [multicians.org]. The credit for coming up with the idea usually goes to Glenda Schroeder.
Re:What about UUCP and DECnet ? (Score:5, Informative)
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That's because Slashdot has just become a clone of HackerNews front page.
Re:No corrections? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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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 [sigcis.org].
"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 [inventorofemail.com]. 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
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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, h
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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?
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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
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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.
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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 har
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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... [yahoo.com]
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/new... [bbc.co.uk]
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)
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Probably afraid of appearing racist. And we all know how *great* Indians are at computers and all that stuff, don't we?
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Good call... (Score:1)
...Since it was actually I who invented email.
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no, I invented email, and so did my wife!
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Morgan Fairchild?
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...Since it was actually I who invented email.
But you could not have done it without me, who invented the computer, and I'll sue anyone who denies it.
Here's the article... (Score:5, Informative)
Enjoy!
Re:Here's the article... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Mayor: Shenanigans! We've had mail for YEARS!
Guy:Ah, but see, my envelopes are longer and brown
Village: [unanimously] Ohhhhhhhhh
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'561 is a great example of technical debt and the inevitability of code marked *** FIX LATER *** never being fixed.
Although the long-term solution to the problem is probably to
add commands for specifying such information to the mail
protocol command space (as suggested in RFC 524 -- 17140,), we
hereby propose a more quickly implemented solution for the
interim.
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You do know what "RFC" stands for right?
Duh! Everyone knows that it stands for Really Fucking Cockward.
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RFC's can document a idea. There doesn't need to be a implementation before a RFC is published.
To get to standard status there needs to be two interoperating implementations.
I've had RFC's published that documented ideas which I needed others to realise after the RFC was published.
I've also had RFC's published that were based on years of deployment of the concept covered by the RFC.
Both ways happen.
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His claims were always far-fetched. Correctly he claims a copyright over a program called "EMAIL", however that does not mean he invented email itself
So it's like Cheverolet claiming he invented the Cheverolet; except hardly anyone ever used or heard of "EMAIL".
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So it's like Cheverolet claiming he invented the Cheverolet; except hardly anyone ever used or heard of "EMAIL".
The history [multicians.org] of the internet [nethistory.info] disagrees with you. If by "hardly anyone" you mean the thousands of users of ARAPNET [wikipedia.org] which spanned the US with hundreds of servers by the time this so-called person "invented" email. "In 1971, Ray Tomlinson, of BBN sent the first network e-mail (RFC 524, RFC 561).[57] By 1973, e-mail constituted 75 percent of ARPANET traffic."
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The history of the internet disagrees with you
You have missed my point. I wrote "EMAIL" not "email ". EMAIL (with capitals) is this liar Ayyadurai's creation (maybe) in 1978, and he claims that all email (lower case) originated with EMAIL (capitals). As you say, he's talking bollocks because ARAPNET and other entities were using email long before 1978.
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It sounds like GP was talking about EMAIL the program not being widely used, not email the protocol.
Oh, I think it's possible to define "email". (Score:3)
What's tricky is defining "invention".
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I think some of that is splitting hairs, I think you could reasonably define email as an electronic messaging system allowing users to exchange private messages asynchronously.
Everything after that is a feature -- attachments, character sets, network reach. etc. Most BBS systems in the 1980s reasonably referred to their private messaging systems as electronic mail.
Re:Oh, I think it's possible to define "email". (Score:4, Interesting)
Plaintiff defines "e-mail” to include features such as an inbox, outbox, folders, a “to:” line, a “from:” line, a “subject:” line, the body of the message and the ability to include attachments, and the ability to copy (“cc”) or blind copy (“bcc”) other recipients. (See Compl. 13). However, that is not the only definition. For example, the online Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “e-mail” in far more general terms as “a means or system for transmitting messages electronically (as between two computers on a network.” E-mail, MERRIAM-WEBSTER, https://www.merriamwebster.com... [merriamwebster.com] (last visited Aug. 31, 2017). Similarly, in the context of a patent dispute, the Federal Circuit has held that “a person of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized that an electronic mail message must include a destination address and must have the capacity to include an address of an originating processor, message content (such as text or an attachment), and a subject.” In re NTP, Inc., 654 F.3d 1279, 1289 (Fed. Cir. 2011). Accordingly, whether plaintiff’s claim to have invented e-mail is “fake” depends upon the operative definition of “e-mail.” Because that definition does not have a single, objectively correct answer, the claim is incapable of being proved true or false.
Given that most messaging systems prior to any formalized RFCs would fall under some sort of "email" designation, it would be hard to prove that they are in fact the original "email" that was invented. What is clear would be that the plaintiff would not be the first.
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>I think you could reasonably define email as an electronic messaging system allowing users to exchange private messages asynchronously.
I think that's a pretty good working definition. The name itself - 'email' is obviously short for 'electronic mail', which is obviously meant to invoke an electronic replacement for the standard postal letter.
And it's just a name. Maybe somebody was calling it 'email' back when I was sending messages across FidoNet, but it doesn't matter. Setting the standard (which t
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With USENET there was a lot of jury rigging of email systems together. A BBS could indeed send email to other systems on the other side of the country even if they had not been originally designed to do so. Though crude, this store and forward system was what really got networks interacting with each other.
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I would suggest that email is any text-based electronic message which is composed to be specifically addressed either to one or more particular people, or else to an organization or particular representatives of that organization, where the addressee receives the electronic message in its digital form, as opposed to a telegram, where a third party collects the transmission and prints it for the addressee.
Graphics and other media are possible in email because even though the message contains non-textual e
Define it then. (Score:2)
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.
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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.
Hormel is suing him (Score:3)
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He never claimed that. What he did claim is also an enormous exaggeration but whatever...
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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. [telegraph.co.uk]
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 Barnu
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Al Gore actually said that he helped create the internet
Yes, he did. And my thesaurus says that 'create' is a synonym for 'invent'.
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Well, if you're going with that expansive definition of "invent", then Gore was correct when he said that.
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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 help
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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 litigio
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At least APK doesn't claim he's "the Inventor of the Host File".
trademark / Patent / Copyright trolls must die (Score:2)
trademark / Patent / Copyright trolls must die and loser pays as well.
E-mail is not that hard to define (Score:2)
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"These original messaging s
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who invented it decades ago is hard to pin down because different communication methods could be considered "email" back then because there were no standards to agree what it was.
So what? The standard for patentability is supposed to be manifold, and based both upon obviousness, and on public knowledge. Someone who creates a formalized, standards-based messaging program hasn't invented messaging, nor come up with the idea, if there were literally dozens of preexisting systems.
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So what? The standard for patentability is supposed to be manifold, and based both upon obviousness, and on public knowledge. Someone who creates a formalized, standards-based messaging program hasn't invented messaging, nor come up with the idea, if there were literally dozens of preexisting systems.
And how does your statement addresses the OP's point that "email" is easy to define? The judge in the case ruled that it wasn't easy to define as there were no standards as to what it was. Thus the ruling states it is legally impossible to prove the plaintiff "invented" email when no one can agree on what was defined as email back then. Judge Saylor does not need to rule on whether the claim that he invented it is true. As part of the libel lawsuit, the plaintiff must prove that the statements made by the d
relevance? (Score:2)
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RFCs from 1973 (Score:4, Informative)
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rf... [ietf.org]
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... [ietf.org]
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 invented email (Score:1, Troll)
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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.
I hereby declare that I have invented (Score:1)
India.
So all the H-1B Sumdogs owe me 10% of their salary. Pay up or be sued.
Much prior art from UICU (Score:4, Informative)
The PLATO [wikipedia.org] 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.
Maybe be did invent something... (Score:2)
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 indepe
The telegram qualifies as "electronic mail". (Score:2)
Long before the internet.... (Score:1)
Long before there WAS an internet; you sent "electronic mail" via Fidonet.
The invention of email was evolved in the public domain software community.
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Ayyadurai is right-wing, genius. They hate free speech at least as much as the left do.
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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 fr
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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?
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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 wh