9 ms·

History by lawsuit: the “inventor of e-mail” targets Techdirt

145 points by ojbyrne 9y ago

Frenchgeek 9y ago
So his claim is entirely based on the fact he copyrighted a program he called "email" and the usual redefinition of terms and playing the victim? And his father is a black belt in ikebana and will beat us up if we don't agree, I guess...
- baudehlo 9y ago
  Correct. And that despite not having anything to do with what we now call email, he copyrighted his program. So despite people using the term before his program, owning the copyright was more powerful. He needs to lose badly and soon, before those people die and can't testify against him.
rectang 9y ago
For the sake of historical accuracy, and for the sake of honest journalism, this lawsuit needs to bedecided in favor of Techdirt and to impose no financial hardship on Techdirt. Ideally, Ayyadurai would be ruined as well -- as a cautionary tale for other miscreants.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > Ideally, Ayyadurai would be ruined as well Paying the other side's legal fees is enough. The problem with injecting vengeance under a veneer of deterrence into the justice system is it dissuades honest suits. The risk of being "right" but not legally correct (per the court's interpretation) becomes too great.
  - qq66 9y ago
    There is plenty of good precedent for allowing countersuits in cases of frivolous litigation.
    - bsder 9y ago
      Not really. The bar is remarkably high, and judges are very reluctant to throw around substantive penalties. The real solution is to force the lawyers to bear some of the burden when they lose. As it stands, the lawyers win regardless of how good or bad their case was.
      - JoBrad 9y ago
        Wouldn't that just discourage lawyers from taking cases that might not win?
        bsder 9y ago
        As opposed to right now where they will happily take even completely lost cases as long as they get paid? I'll take that risk, thanks. First, I'm not talking about criminal cases. I'm a firm believer that someone defending against a criminal conviction needs every single advantage they can get. The government is a well-funded, implacable enemy and you need every bit of help to fight it if you are innocent. However, I have been part of several civil cases where the judge has basically said "I have rarely seen such horrific behavior from both client and lawyer--I have no real penalty sufficient that I can impose." And this was after the lawyer was blowing off court imposed deadlines and fines. The American civil legal system is set up for "the truth is somewhere in the middle even if it skews to one side or another." When you have genuinely bad actors on one side, it can be abused very badly, and it doesn't have very good self-correction.
kstenerud 9y ago
It's unfortunate, but he's not actually trying to scam anyone. He truly believes that he invented email. Furthermore, he has become paranoid in the belief that there is a huge conspiracy to discredit him.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > he's not actually trying to scam anyone Consider replacing "actually" with "intentionally"? He's actually trying to sell a lie. Whether he knows it's a lie might be another matter, and I'll grant you the benefit of doubt around his delusion.
  - kstenerud 9y ago
    No, thanks. Not interested in a pointless fight over semantics.
    - obstinate 9y ago
      Doesn't need to be a fight. You could just correct your misstatement
  - DanBC 9y ago
    It's by definition not a lie if he believes it to be true.
    - giggles_giggles 9y ago
      The first step to telling a believable lie is to believe the lie yourself, because then you won't display the subconscious displays of deceit on your face. There's a Seinfeld episode where George tells Jerry that if he wants to get better at lying, he has to convince himself of the lie first. So I don't entirely think that the teller of the lie needs to believe that it's a lie for it to be a lie. If they believe it, it just means that they're deceiving themselves as well.
      - 9y ago
elandybarr 9y ago
Shiva is a great guy. I strongly encourage readers to watch or listen to him actually speak, rather than get that third-hand. I'm glad that he won against Gawker and am cheering for him to defeat Elizabeth Warren for Senate. He is the kind of smart, wise, and experienced technocrat that we could use in government, with an actual numerical sense and experience staffing teams and making payroll.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > [Ayyadurai] is a great guy Great people don't sue news outlets to claim credit for things they say they did decades ago. They sue for royalties, or better yet, shut up and do things. This guy checks all the boxes for a sociopathic fraud.
  - arkitaip 9y ago
    He really comes off as a sociopath if you check his Twitter, where he calls someone a moron, keeps attacking Elizabeth Warren, and treats Alex Jones/Info Wars as a serious media outlet [0]. Also, it's hilarious that he considers himself the target of a racist conspiracy but goes to great lengths to deny that Trump's and Bannon's racist politics. And this is a guy who is running for senate. [0] https://twitter.com/va_shiva https://twitter.com/va_shiva
    - elandybarr 9y ago
      I have spoken to him at length myself. If you don't think Infowars is a serious news outlet, maybe you haven't watched them? In about 20 years they have had I think 3 retractions, which a propaganda rag like CNN or the Washington Post has to do weekly. I would wish that HN would have more people who care about primary sources - that is what my academic training taught me. Perhaps if you listened to any of Bannon's speeches rather than malicious rumor and hearsay, you would have a different opinion.
      - icelancer 9y ago
        >I would wish that HN would have more people who care about primary sources >If you don't think Infowars is a serious news outlet, maybe you haven't watched them Sometimes the comments write themselves.
ngold 9y ago
Im assuming he has not watched Mike Judges Silicon Valley.
Spooky23 9y ago
Another lunatic with an Alex Jones connection.
eblah 9y ago
I rarely comment, but the article, until the last page was great. It felt very bait and switch -- pull you along with the story, then, oh yeah... you could vote for this guy, and be just as terrible as he is. While the article is very biased against him, which I would usually feel is fine (and without further researching the topic, I'd agree he seems pretty terrible), but if there's a possibility that this is politically motivated let people know up front. Why not add his political affiliation early in the first page, instead of waiting until the very the end? And to be clear, I don't believe that he "invented email."
- mcv 9y ago
  His political affiliation isn't terribly relevant. The problem is that he wants to rewrite history and claim fame that's not his. He may want to run as a Republican now, but he's also convinced Noam Chomsky to support his claim. Politics isn't the point. Here's a guy who's very effective at scamming people into believing his lies and supporting his false claims.
- jdormit 9y ago
  There's not a chance that he will get elected to represent MA. We are the bluest of the blue states.
- chrismcb 9y ago
  I think his political motivations aren't really that relevant to the story, they are in the correct position in the sticks. He sued gawker and even tech dirt before deciding to run for office.
greggh 9y ago
I felt like I had won something when he got so sick of me telling the truth on Twitter that he blocked me. He did not invent email as we know it today. He copywrited a term that described something people had already been doing for many years. That is not invention.
- teddyh 9y ago
  There’s no such word as “copywrited”. The closest word is “copyrighted”, but you can’t copyright a term. You can get a trademark for a term, but it seems that’s not what this is about either.
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    "copywrited" is pretty understandable and definitely a word, it may not be a mainstream dictionary word however. A section of text produced by a copywriter has been "copywrited". It's ugly and unnecessary use of language IMO, I side with https://www.rensch.com/copywrite.html https://www.rensch.com/copywrite.html more. It has nothing whatever to do with intellectual property _rights_ however.
    - jcranmer 9y ago
      Given that the past participle of "write" is "written" and the preterite is "wrote", the forms of "copywrite" should be "copywrote" and "copywritten", not "copywrited."
      - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
        They should be, agreed, but people don't always language in ways we expect.
      - stevekemp 9y ago
        That seems logical, unfortunately the only response which can be made is "English is weird". (Though people do try to generalise rules like this, I see a lot of foreigners try to write "payed" instead of "paid". Similar idea, and equally logical.)
gerdesj 9y ago
Well t'internet continues to be disruptive. This seems to be the opposite of eg vacuum cleaners being referred to as Hoovers or ball point pens as Biros. RFC 822 does not use the term email (nor does RFC 733) and yet I'm fairly sure (I was was only 12 in 1982) that email (e-mail and others) was a regularly used term back then for several message types that involved computers. A copyright enforcement in just the US does not rewrite history.
- jcranmer 9y ago
  RFC 822 and RFC 733 use "electronic mail", which is clearly meant to be the same term as e-mail and email. The point about "I got a copyright for EMAIL, therefore the US government recognized me as the inventor of email" belies either a fundamental misunderstanding of what copyright is and isn't or a malicious attempt to deceive and defraud.
  - gerdesj 9y ago
    Good catch - para 1.1 from RFC 822: "This standard specifies a syntax for text messages that are sent among computer users, within the framework of "electronic mail"."
  - sowbug 9y ago
    It's not just a misunderstanding of copyright itself, but also a misunderstanding of what copyright registration means. US copyrights have been automatic since 1978: https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html#register https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html#register. You get it the moment you write something down on paper, or otherwise "fix [it] in a tangible medium." He is probably talking about copyright registration, which is a requirement before suing someone in the US for infringement. It's just a rubber stamp.
  - chrismcb 9y ago
    It is interesting that he claims he invented it, yet ages that the RFC predates worh, but it's only a standard. Yet he implemented email therefore he invented it. Ignoring his "no true scottsman" argument, I don't see how he has a key to stand on.
notknown32 9y ago
Wow. Ayyadurai won $750,000 in a lawsuit from by-then-bankrupt Gawker Media. In fact it was billionaire Peter Thiel, who just wanted to ruin Gawker and was behind this result. Duh. What a waste of $750k. "Denton wrote that "we expected to prevail" in the Ayyadurai and Terrill lawsuits, "but all-out legal war with" billionaire Peter Thiel, who financially backed Harder, was untenable in terms of cost, time and human toll.[37]" . Wikipedia.
drtillberg 9y ago
The individual that is the subject of the article is mixing terms, which is curious for one with ready access to counsel. A "copyright" registration does not indicate that one is an "inventor." One way to look at his omission to try to enjoin all from using the term "e-mail," is as an admission that the word was incidental to the registration, is and was not protected, and that it never mattered for the registration whether his use of the word was original. Brings to mind mismarking of products as being subject to patent protection, which, of course, is against the law. Would be just charmed to see an extension of those principles to improper assertions of copyright protection.
pbhjpbhj 9y ago
>Gawker paid Ayyadurai $750,000 to settle all claims // Why? It says they were already battered from another lawsuit, I don't see why that means you should make a pay out to someone else who's lying; what specific claims had Gawker made that were supposedly false? It keeps saying in the article this charlatan demands recognition. He appears to think having a copyright in a 40 y.o. program listing gives him a current patent?? Supposing he had invented email there seems no legal basis to give him any credit at all. Ars were hella careful to give the false claims the last word.
- Taniwha 9y ago
  If I were Gawker and going under because a predatory billionaire was going after me I'd throw as much money in other directions as possible as the ship sunk too.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
drtillberg 9y ago
The August 1982 registration discussed in the article was entitled "Computer program for electronic mail system." There are many subsequent registrations for things named "email." The copyright office catalog has 1977 registrations for a newsletter about "electronic mail & message systems" ("covering technology, user, product and legislative trends in graphic and record communications.") There is a 1979 registration for a book about "The Electronic mail market in Europe" and another for "Electronic mail in the 1980’s."
memracom 9y ago
In 1974 I started Computer Science at the University of Waterloo in Canada, and I got my first email accounts (plural) on various timesharing systems. The one that I used most was on a Honeywell 6050 TSS system (we called that one Honeybun, or the 'bun for short) and using the campus comms network, we would login to check email from several buildings on campus, many times a day. That comms network also allowed dialup modem access using acoustic couplers and I remember one department that had a TI Silent 700 terminal with acoustic coupler and modem, specifically so that they could connect to the 'bun. And the IBM VM 370/CMS system also had email. People on that system developed a way to interconnect mainframes across the globe using a system called BITNET that was an email predecessor of the Internet proper. On the 'bun we had the MAIL command which was either part of Honeywell's GCOS TSS or perhaps was one of the enhancements that we got from Bell Labs. When the University started setting up UNIX systems using the software from BELL Labs, we interconnected the UNIX email systems with the 'bun. Then by 1976 Waterloo folk had built an enhanced email system call Space Mail (because the command to invoke it was to type one space by MAIL) which had almost all the features of modern email systems such as revoking a message that you had sent by deleting it from the recipient's mailbox. I suspect that no single person invented email. We lived in a world surrounded by paper mail delivery systems so at the earliest possible moment, anyone who could, was writing code to emulate mail systems in the computer. It's that simple.
- criddell 9y ago
  I always thought the various email-related RFC's pretty much destroyed Ayyadurai claim. For example, https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc561 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc561 is from 1973.
zeroxfe 9y ago
Wow, this is just like that dude running around calling himself the inventor of the chromebook.
snambi 9y ago
Sounds like a scam. Can government prevent such open scams?
zackbloom 9y ago
I personally traced the history of email back to at least 1971: https://eager.io/blog/history-of-email/ https://eager.io/blog/history-of-email/ After writing that someone let me know about this guy and his claims, and I think I added a somewhat flippant section on it. Of all the people who might have 'invented' email, it certainly wasn't him.
- Stratoscope 9y ago
  It's so weird that this guy thinks he invented email in 1982. I wrote one of the first email programs for PC-DOS in 1982 [1] [2], and we certainly didn't think we were "inventing" email. As you note in your article, it had been around for years! (We called it "electronic mail" back then.) The only novel things about our program were: 1. It used a graphical user interface built with the character mode graphics on the IBM Monochrome Display. 2. We had the ability to connect to multiple email services using a scripting language, along with point-to-point dial-up connections to other users of our program. But the email services we connected to had been around for quite a while before that. How else would we have gotten the idea of connecting to them - and more than one of them? We had definitely never heard of this guy and his EMAIL program! [1] https://archive.org/stream/byte-magazine-1983-11-rescan/1983_11_BYTE_08-11_Inside_the_IBM_PC#page/n199/mode/2up https://archive.org/stream/byte-magazine-1983-11-rescan/1983... [2] https://books.google.com/books?id=6i8EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA28&lpg=PA28#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=6i8EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA28&lpg=P... The references are from 1983, but we were working on the program though most of 1982.
chrismcb 9y ago
I hate that he tries to play the victim card. He claims people don't want to agree with him because he is a lower class "brown" person and did the work as a 14 year old. People don't believe him, because he is just plain wrong. It has nothing to do with his age not heritage. And there is plenty of evidence to suggest he is wrong.
S_A_P 9y ago
It seems that he is using the tactic of racial conspiracy to muddy the waters. When you can't win on facts alone, make it about race and conspiracies.

145 points by ojbyrne 9y ago

So his claim is entirely based on the fact he copyrighted a program he called "email" and the usual redefinition of terms and playing the victim? And his father is a black belt in ikebana and will beat us up if we don't agree, I guess...

baudehlo 9y ago
Correct. And that despite not having anything to do with what we now call email, he copyrighted his program. So despite people using the term before his program, owning the copyright was more powerful. He needs to lose badly and soon, before those people die and can't testify against him.

rectang 9y ago

For the sake of historical accuracy, and for the sake of honest journalism, this lawsuit needs to bedecided in favor of Techdirt and to impose no financial hardship on Techdirt. Ideally, Ayyadurai would be ruined as well -- as a cautionary tale for other miscreants.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> Ideally, Ayyadurai would be ruined as well Paying the other side's legal fees is enough. The problem with injecting vengeance under a veneer of deterrence into the justice system is it dissuades honest suits. The risk of being "right" but not legally correct (per the court's interpretation) becomes too great.
- qq66 9y ago
  There is plenty of good precedent for allowing countersuits in cases of frivolous litigation.
  - bsder 9y ago
    Not really. The bar is remarkably high, and judges are very reluctant to throw around substantive penalties. The real solution is to force the lawyers to bear some of the burden when they lose. As it stands, the lawyers win regardless of how good or bad their case was.
    - JoBrad 9y ago
      Wouldn't that just discourage lawyers from taking cases that might not win?
      - bsder 9y ago
        As opposed to right now where they will happily take even completely lost cases as long as they get paid? I'll take that risk, thanks. First, I'm not talking about criminal cases. I'm a firm believer that someone defending against a criminal conviction needs every single advantage they can get. The government is a well-funded, implacable enemy and you need every bit of help to fight it if you are innocent. However, I have been part of several civil cases where the judge has basically said "I have rarely seen such horrific behavior from both client and lawyer--I have no real penalty sufficient that I can impose." And this was after the lawyer was blowing off court imposed deadlines and fines. The American civil legal system is set up for "the truth is somewhere in the middle even if it skews to one side or another." When you have genuinely bad actors on one side, it can be abused very badly, and it doesn't have very good self-correction.

kstenerud 9y ago

It's unfortunate, but he's not actually trying to scam anyone. He truly believes that he invented email. Furthermore, he has become paranoid in the belief that there is a huge conspiracy to discredit him.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> he's not actually trying to scam anyone Consider replacing "actually" with "intentionally"? He's actually trying to sell a lie. Whether he knows it's a lie might be another matter, and I'll grant you the benefit of doubt around his delusion.
- kstenerud 9y ago
  No, thanks. Not interested in a pointless fight over semantics.
  - obstinate 9y ago
    Doesn't need to be a fight. You could just correct your misstatement
- DanBC 9y ago
  It's by definition not a lie if he believes it to be true.
  - giggles_giggles 9y ago
    The first step to telling a believable lie is to believe the lie yourself, because then you won't display the subconscious displays of deceit on your face. There's a Seinfeld episode where George tells Jerry that if he wants to get better at lying, he has to convince himself of the lie first. So I don't entirely think that the teller of the lie needs to believe that it's a lie for it to be a lie. If they believe it, it just means that they're deceiving themselves as well.
    - 9y ago

elandybarr 9y ago

Shiva is a great guy. I strongly encourage readers to watch or listen to him actually speak, rather than get that third-hand. I'm glad that he won against Gawker and am cheering for him to defeat Elizabeth Warren for Senate. He is the kind of smart, wise, and experienced technocrat that we could use in government, with an actual numerical sense and experience staffing teams and making payroll.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> [Ayyadurai] is a great guy Great people don't sue news outlets to claim credit for things they say they did decades ago. They sue for royalties, or better yet, shut up and do things. This guy checks all the boxes for a sociopathic fraud.
- arkitaip 9y ago
  He really comes off as a sociopath if you check his Twitter, where he calls someone a moron, keeps attacking Elizabeth Warren, and treats Alex Jones/Info Wars as a serious media outlet [0]. Also, it's hilarious that he considers himself the target of a racist conspiracy but goes to great lengths to deny that Trump's and Bannon's racist politics. And this is a guy who is running for senate. [0] https://twitter.com/va_shiva https://twitter.com/va_shiva
  - elandybarr 9y ago
    I have spoken to him at length myself. If you don't think Infowars is a serious news outlet, maybe you haven't watched them? In about 20 years they have had I think 3 retractions, which a propaganda rag like CNN or the Washington Post has to do weekly. I would wish that HN would have more people who care about primary sources - that is what my academic training taught me. Perhaps if you listened to any of Bannon's speeches rather than malicious rumor and hearsay, you would have a different opinion.
    - icelancer 9y ago
      >I would wish that HN would have more people who care about primary sources >If you don't think Infowars is a serious news outlet, maybe you haven't watched them Sometimes the comments write themselves.

ngold 9y ago

Im assuming he has not watched Mike Judges Silicon Valley.

Spooky23 9y ago

Another lunatic with an Alex Jones connection.

eblah 9y ago

I rarely comment, but the article, until the last page was great. It felt very bait and switch -- pull you along with the story, then, oh yeah... you could vote for this guy, and be just as terrible as he is. While the article is very biased against him, which I would usually feel is fine (and without further researching the topic, I'd agree he seems pretty terrible), but if there's a possibility that this is politically motivated let people know up front. Why not add his political affiliation early in the first page, instead of waiting until the very the end? And to be clear, I don't believe that he "invented email."

mcv 9y ago
His political affiliation isn't terribly relevant. The problem is that he wants to rewrite history and claim fame that's not his. He may want to run as a Republican now, but he's also convinced Noam Chomsky to support his claim. Politics isn't the point. Here's a guy who's very effective at scamming people into believing his lies and supporting his false claims.
jdormit 9y ago
There's not a chance that he will get elected to represent MA. We are the bluest of the blue states.
chrismcb 9y ago
I think his political motivations aren't really that relevant to the story, they are in the correct position in the sticks. He sued gawker and even tech dirt before deciding to run for office.

greggh 9y ago

I felt like I had won something when he got so sick of me telling the truth on Twitter that he blocked me. He did not invent email as we know it today. He copywrited a term that described something people had already been doing for many years. That is not invention.

teddyh 9y ago
There’s no such word as “copywrited”. The closest word is “copyrighted”, but you can’t copyright a term. You can get a trademark for a term, but it seems that’s not what this is about either.
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  "copywrited" is pretty understandable and definitely a word, it may not be a mainstream dictionary word however. A section of text produced by a copywriter has been "copywrited". It's ugly and unnecessary use of language IMO, I side with https://www.rensch.com/copywrite.html https://www.rensch.com/copywrite.html more. It has nothing whatever to do with intellectual property _rights_ however.
  - jcranmer 9y ago
    Given that the past participle of "write" is "written" and the preterite is "wrote", the forms of "copywrite" should be "copywrote" and "copywritten", not "copywrited."
    - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
      They should be, agreed, but people don't always language in ways we expect.
    - stevekemp 9y ago
      That seems logical, unfortunately the only response which can be made is "English is weird". (Though people do try to generalise rules like this, I see a lot of foreigners try to write "payed" instead of "paid". Similar idea, and equally logical.)

gerdesj 9y ago

Well t'internet continues to be disruptive. This seems to be the opposite of eg vacuum cleaners being referred to as Hoovers or ball point pens as Biros. RFC 822 does not use the term email (nor does RFC 733) and yet I'm fairly sure (I was was only 12 in 1982) that email (e-mail and others) was a regularly used term back then for several message types that involved computers. A copyright enforcement in just the US does not rewrite history.

jcranmer 9y ago
RFC 822 and RFC 733 use "electronic mail", which is clearly meant to be the same term as e-mail and email. The point about "I got a copyright for EMAIL, therefore the US government recognized me as the inventor of email" belies either a fundamental misunderstanding of what copyright is and isn't or a malicious attempt to deceive and defraud.
- gerdesj 9y ago
  Good catch - para 1.1 from RFC 822: "This standard specifies a syntax for text messages that are sent among computer users, within the framework of "electronic mail"."
- sowbug 9y ago
  It's not just a misunderstanding of copyright itself, but also a misunderstanding of what copyright registration means. US copyrights have been automatic since 1978: https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html#register https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html#register. You get it the moment you write something down on paper, or otherwise "fix [it] in a tangible medium." He is probably talking about copyright registration, which is a requirement before suing someone in the US for infringement. It's just a rubber stamp.
- chrismcb 9y ago
  It is interesting that he claims he invented it, yet ages that the RFC predates worh, but it's only a standard. Yet he implemented email therefore he invented it. Ignoring his "no true scottsman" argument, I don't see how he has a key to stand on.

notknown32 9y ago

Wow. Ayyadurai won $750,000 in a lawsuit from by-then-bankrupt Gawker Media. In fact it was billionaire Peter Thiel, who just wanted to ruin Gawker and was behind this result. Duh. What a waste of $750k. "Denton wrote that "we expected to prevail" in the Ayyadurai and Terrill lawsuits, "but all-out legal war with" billionaire Peter Thiel, who financially backed Harder, was untenable in terms of cost, time and human toll.[37]" . Wikipedia.

drtillberg 9y ago

The individual that is the subject of the article is mixing terms, which is curious for one with ready access to counsel. A "copyright" registration does not indicate that one is an "inventor." One way to look at his omission to try to enjoin all from using the term "e-mail," is as an admission that the word was incidental to the registration, is and was not protected, and that it never mattered for the registration whether his use of the word was original. Brings to mind mismarking of products as being subject to patent protection, which, of course, is against the law. Would be just charmed to see an extension of those principles to improper assertions of copyright protection.

pbhjpbhj 9y ago

>Gawker paid Ayyadurai $750,000 to settle all claims // Why? It says they were already battered from another lawsuit, I don't see why that means you should make a pay out to someone else who's lying; what specific claims had Gawker made that were supposedly false? It keeps saying in the article this charlatan demands recognition. He appears to think having a copyright in a 40 y.o. program listing gives him a current patent?? Supposing he had invented email there seems no legal basis to give him any credit at all. Ars were hella careful to give the false claims the last word.

Taniwha 9y ago
If I were Gawker and going under because a predatory billionaire was going after me I'd throw as much money in other directions as possible as the ship sunk too.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

drtillberg 9y ago

The August 1982 registration discussed in the article was entitled "Computer program for electronic mail system." There are many subsequent registrations for things named "email." The copyright office catalog has 1977 registrations for a newsletter about "electronic mail & message systems" ("covering technology, user, product and legislative trends in graphic and record communications.") There is a 1979 registration for a book about "The Electronic mail market in Europe" and another for "Electronic mail in the 1980’s."

memracom 9y ago

In 1974 I started Computer Science at the University of Waterloo in Canada, and I got my first email accounts (plural) on various timesharing systems. The one that I used most was on a Honeywell 6050 TSS system (we called that one Honeybun, or the 'bun for short) and using the campus comms network, we would login to check email from several buildings on campus, many times a day. That comms network also allowed dialup modem access using acoustic couplers and I remember one department that had a TI Silent 700 terminal with acoustic coupler and modem, specifically so that they could connect to the 'bun. And the IBM VM 370/CMS system also had email. People on that system developed a way to interconnect mainframes across the globe using a system called BITNET that was an email predecessor of the Internet proper. On the 'bun we had the MAIL command which was either part of Honeywell's GCOS TSS or perhaps was one of the enhancements that we got from Bell Labs. When the University started setting up UNIX systems using the software from BELL Labs, we interconnected the UNIX email systems with the 'bun. Then by 1976 Waterloo folk had built an enhanced email system call Space Mail (because the command to invoke it was to type one space by MAIL) which had almost all the features of modern email systems such as revoking a message that you had sent by deleting it from the recipient's mailbox. I suspect that no single person invented email. We lived in a world surrounded by paper mail delivery systems so at the earliest possible moment, anyone who could, was writing code to emulate mail systems in the computer. It's that simple.

criddell 9y ago
I always thought the various email-related RFC's pretty much destroyed Ayyadurai claim. For example, https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc561 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc561 is from 1973.

zeroxfe 9y ago

Wow, this is just like that dude running around calling himself the inventor of the chromebook.

snambi 9y ago

Sounds like a scam. Can government prevent such open scams?

zackbloom 9y ago

I personally traced the history of email back to at least 1971: https://eager.io/blog/history-of-email/ https://eager.io/blog/history-of-email/ After writing that someone let me know about this guy and his claims, and I think I added a somewhat flippant section on it. Of all the people who might have 'invented' email, it certainly wasn't him.

Stratoscope 9y ago
It's so weird that this guy thinks he invented email in 1982. I wrote one of the first email programs for PC-DOS in 1982 [1] [2], and we certainly didn't think we were "inventing" email. As you note in your article, it had been around for years! (We called it "electronic mail" back then.) The only novel things about our program were: 1. It used a graphical user interface built with the character mode graphics on the IBM Monochrome Display. 2. We had the ability to connect to multiple email services using a scripting language, along with point-to-point dial-up connections to other users of our program. But the email services we connected to had been around for quite a while before that. How else would we have gotten the idea of connecting to them - and more than one of them? We had definitely never heard of this guy and his EMAIL program! [1] https://archive.org/stream/byte-magazine-1983-11-rescan/1983_11_BYTE_08-11_Inside_the_IBM_PC#page/n199/mode/2up https://archive.org/stream/byte-magazine-1983-11-rescan/1983... [2] https://books.google.com/books?id=6i8EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA28&lpg=PA28#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=6i8EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA28&lpg=P... The references are from 1983, but we were working on the program though most of 1982.

chrismcb 9y ago

I hate that he tries to play the victim card. He claims people don't want to agree with him because he is a lower class "brown" person and did the work as a 14 year old. People don't believe him, because he is just plain wrong. It has nothing to do with his age not heritage. And there is plenty of evidence to suggest he is wrong.

S_A_P 9y ago

It seems that he is using the tactic of racial conspiracy to muddy the waters. When you can't win on facts alone, make it about race and conspiracies.