
Internet Pioneers Slam $750,000 Settlement for the 'Man Who Invented Email' - okket
http://gizmodo.com/internet-pioneers-slam-750-000-settlement-for-the-man-1788503950
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danso
This is disturbing on a First Amendment level: you can't insult someone when
he makes a claim that puts him in the public spotlight, and when such a claim
is highly disputable with facts?

On a tech level, this is just shameful. Neither Thiel or Ayyadurai will say if
Thiel paid for this lawsuit, that it's just a coincidence that he hired the
same lawyer at around the same time when Thiel hired him for the Hogan case.
After Tomlinson died, Ayyadurai immediately went on the offensive and blogged,
"Correction: The Inventor of Email is Still Alive"

[http://fortune.com/2016/03/07/who-really-invented-
email/](http://fortune.com/2016/03/07/who-really-invented-email/)

Edit: a more in depth story here from 2012 when the debate first broke out;
MIT apparently highly disagreed with Ayyadurai's version of history and cut
off ties with him [http://www.bostonmagazine.com/2012/05/shiva-ayyaduri-
email-u...](http://www.bostonmagazine.com/2012/05/shiva-ayyaduri-email-us-
postal-service/)

~~~
pmiller2
This is not disturbing on a First Amendment level. What is disturbing is the
misconception that the First Amendment applies to anyone other than the
government.

It does seem like a questionable result on its face, but not for 1st amendment
reasons.

~~~
danso
i get what you're saying in the sense that people often erroneously cry "First
Amendment" when being censored by a private entity. But the legislating of
libel is most definitely a First Amendment issue. That's is why the Supreme
Court makes rulings on the standard of defamation, particularly in regard to
public figures:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._Sullivan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._Sullivan)

The Sullivan case does not only apply to the critique of government officials.
Jerry Falwell tried to sue Hustler for depicting him as an incestuous drunk;
the Supreme Court ruled against him, 8-0.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hustler_Magazine_v._Falwell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hustler_Magazine_v._Falwell)

~~~
pmiller2
This is an out of court settlement, not a trial result. Had it gone to trial,
truth is an absolute defense to libel, so there's still no first amendment
concern.

~~~
Retric
The courts are part of the government. And settling only has meaning due to
the laws that govern free speech.

PS: It's not may make no law, except the kind that let's politicians sue
people.

~~~
pmiller2
This is one private party suing another private party. All the court did is
accept a settlement offer (which probably took place even before the trial
itself started, so there wasn't even any actual finding of fact).

~~~
Retric
Which only happened because of how the court would have likely responded. If a
judge would have thrown out the case in 5 minutes then there would have been
no settlement.

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wyldfire
> he named it “email”; he obtained the first U.S. copyright to that invention,
> and the world’s modern system of electronic mail was born.

Wow! This struck me at first as an embarrassing error from a journalist or
publicist. "copyright ... invention." But it's from Ayyadurai's attorney, so
it's likely deviously clever instead of bumblingly stupid. Read the words and
parse them out: "the first US Copyright to that invention." Well, ok, sure you
can call copyrights inventions. Legally they often refer to them as such. But
unlike patents, copyrights need not be novel. The attorney calling it "the
first ... invention" is likely worded so as to intentionally confuse people
who don't distinguish between copyrights, patents, trademarks and the like.

Let's say everyone on my block comes up with a design for "autonomous meshes
of robot lawnmowers." If we each develop prototypes in series after having
seen the others' works, perhaps they are not derived works and the designs
deserve their own copyrights. But wouldn't it be silly for each of us to
independently claim the title "inventor of autonomous mesh-robot-lawnmowers"?
Often when ordinary people use that term they would assume it to be based on
novelty and thus should be a mutually exclusive title per invention.

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scosman
Interesting that Gizmodo was a gawker property and this is them essentially
re-publishing the claims, immediately after setting a defamation lawsuit.

~~~
brazzledazzle
This one appears to have been written more carefully.

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sulam
I love how carefully this article reports on statements made in other
publications without making any statements itself. Some lawyer made a good
amount of money reading drafts of this thing, to make sure they can't be sued!

~~~
mcguire
" _Univision, which purchased most of Gawker Media’s assets (including this
site) out of bankruptcy in September, deleted two Gizmodo posts concerning
Ayyadurai..._ "

The new owners want the whole mess behind them.

------
jbuzbee
More coverage here:

[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161103/11502935958/heres...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161103/11502935958/heres-
truth-shiva-ayyadurai-didnt-invent-email.shtml)

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thick18cm
Does anybody know, does Peter Thiel get any of the "credit" for helping this
to happen, i.e. since it's the same attorney, was it part of his same funding
effort? If so, it would be somewhat hilarious--"Thiel supports claim that
email was invented in 1982"\--but more seriously points up more clearly that
big money supporting lawsuits for revenge is not always as "civic minded" as
the clear privacy issues of the Bollea case.

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Terr_
IMO even the article title perpetuates the problem -- quotation marks
notwithstanding -- because it still pushes the phrase out there.

Why not "Man who claims he invented email"?

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sthkr
Anything to hurt Nick Denton and shutdown Gawker is awesome no matter how
absurd the case.

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blazespin
I dunno, I think the settlment is right. I'm sure someone before Tomlinson
invented a way to talk to someone else over electronic communication. Like,
you know, the telegram? From what I can tell, Ayyadurai actually invented
"email". Makes perfect sense to me.

Look at all the techies downvoting, because Tomlinson is such a genius for
thinking that someone might want to use internet to communicate with each
other. The reality is we call it email. That's something to brag about.

~~~
totalZero
He didn't invent email.

He built something and named it "EMAIL" after email already existed.

Then he marketed himself as the inventor of email and married Fran Drescher.

