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Re: Shiva Ayyadurai suing TechDirt over Stories Saying He Di

PostPosted: Tue Feb 14, 2017 6:42 am
by admin
Univision Execs Have No Backbone: Pull A Bunch Of Gawker Stories Over Legal Disputes
from the no-credibility dept
by Mike Masnick
Mon, Sep 12th 2016 6:27am

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People celebrating the "demise" of Gawker in being forced into bankruptcy by a questionable lawsuit and ruling from Hulk Hogan, financed by Peter Thiel, keep insisting that it has no real impact on the freedom of the press. And yet... things keep showing that's wrong. Gawker filed for bankruptcy and sold off its assets to media giant Univision, which agreed to close down the flagship Gawker site and redistribute some of the reporters to other sites. But late Friday, Univision management made another decision, and this one is horrific: they agreed to delete six stories on the site (with a seventh one being considered) because those stories were the subject of lawsuits against Gawker.

The reasoning given by Univision is that it only agreed to buy the assets of Gawker, not the liabilities, and keeping those stories posted gave it liability. First of all, this is wrong on the legal side of things. As Gawker's executive editor, John Cook (who fought this decision) notes, Univision doesn't take on the liability here:

Though the posts were published by Gawker Media, and therefore under the so-called “first publication rule” should only be the legal responsibility of the Gawker Media estate being left behind in the transaction, Unimoda’s legal analysis was that the continued publication of the posts under the new entity would constitute the adoption of liability, and that Unimoda is therefore obligated to delete them.


But that's not the most disturbing thing here. The really problematic issue is that the stories that are being removed involve stories where the lawsuits are almost entirely completely bogus SLAPP suits designed to annoy Gawker, rather than with any serious legal basis -- for example, the two stories that Gawker published about Shiva Ayyadurai, the guy who keeps trying to convince the world that he invented email when he didn't. We've discussed Ayyadurai and his bogus claims many times, and also covered the lawsuit. There is no legitimate reason to take down those posts.

Perhaps even more incredible is that Univision also agreed to take down the story that nutty troll Chuck C. Johnson had filed a lawsuit against Gawker. That's a lawsuit that is so ridiculous it was laughed out of court in Missouri. And while Johnson filed a nearly identical lawsuit (including references to Missouri) in California, it was similarly going nowhere, and Johnson recently said that he'd dropped the case.

And yet Univision voted to delete the story anyway.

This is... bad. It's one thing to make a decision to pull a story once you've analyzed the situation and decided that the story has problems and should be pulled. But that's not what happened here. Univision execs flat out told Cook that this was solely about not taking on the liability. In other words, Univision has absolutely zero backbone to stand up for its journalists. That's shameful.

This move basically immediately does two things. First, it alerts anyone who wants a heckler's veto to threaten Univision with a lawsuit. Second, it should immediately cause any good journalist working for Univision or its properties (including Gawker and Fusion) to start looking for a new job elsewhere. If you can't have your publisher back you up on things like this, that's a dangerous place for a reporter to work. Kudos to Cook for trying to stand up to Univision, but if those execs wouldn't listen to him, the company's got really big problems.

I communicated to Felipe and Jay in the strongest terms that deleting these posts is a mistake, and that disappearing true posts about public figures simply because they have been targeted by a lawyer who conspired with a vindictive billionaire to destroy this company is an affront to the very editorial ethos that has made us successful enough to be worth acquiring. I told them that I am proud that this company refused to delete its accurate posts about Shiva Ayudurrai’s false claim to have invented the email system of communication, and that I am proud that our decision not to take down accurate posts about Mitch Williams’ meltdown at a children’s baseball game was vindicated by a federal judge, who ruled in our favor in his case against us. I am mortified to see them taken down now. We are at the center of an unprecedented assault on the ability of reporters and editors to challenge and critique public figures. While I believe that Univision is a company that values and defends aggressive, independent reporting, the decision to remove these posts is, in my view, at odds with its tradition of confronting bullies with honesty.


Univision just did a big thing badly. And it sullies the company's reputation and brand, and it makes all of the company's remaining journalistic staff look bad.

And, of course, this is the internet, where trying to make stuff disappear never works. I went over to archive.is soon after the announcement came out (and before the stories had been taken down) and every single one had been re-archived (many had been previously archived) within the previous hour. So if you're curious what was in the stories too hot for Univision's backboneless execs, here they are:

The Inventor of Email Did Not Invent Email?
Corruption, Lies, and Death Threats: The Crazy Story of the Man Who Pretended to Invent Email
Man Acquitted Of Sexual Assault Sues Blog For Calling Him Serial Rapist
Wait, Did Clowntroll Blogger Chuck Johnson Shit On The Floor One Time?
Uber Driver in California Will Be Considered Employee, Not Contractor
Mitch Williams Ejected From Child's Baseball Game For Arguing, Cursing
Witnesses: Mitch Williams Called Child "A Pussy," Ordered Beanball

This is why we need publications that don't back down in the face of SLAPP suits. This is why we need stronger anti-SLAPP laws (and a federal anti-SLAPP law). This is why we express concerns about billionaires ganging up to sue publications out of existence in a vengeance play. Publications are vulnerable, but they're supposed to stand up to bogus threats, not cave in out of fear.

Re: Shiva Ayyadurai suing TechDirt over Stories Saying He Di

PostPosted: Tue Feb 14, 2017 6:44 am
by admin
Ridiculous: Nick Denton Settles Remaining Charles Harder Lawsuits, Agrees To Delete Perfectly True Stories
from the that's-fucked-up dept
by Mike Masnick
Wed, Nov 2nd 2016 10:42am

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Congrats Peter Thiel: you've successfully censored true stories reported by the press. Just a little while ago, Nick Denton posted that the remaining three cases filed by lawyer Charles Harder against Gawker, Denton and some reporters had been settled, with the agreement to remove the stories. Harder, of course, is the lawyer that Peter Thiel set up with his own practice, with the stated mission of filing lawsuits that would kill Gawker. Thiel/Harder "won" back when this effort forced Gawker into bankruptcy and then a fire sale to Univision. But now the remaining stories have been officially killed off. This includes the famous Hulk Hogan story and case -- meaning that the appeal, which basically every lawyer admits would have resulted in overturning the lower court's jury verdict, is dead. I know the Gawker haters will cheer this outright censorship (or, worse, insist that this proves that the case was legitimate -- despite the fact it never was). But let's focus on one of the other stories that is getting censored here thanks to Peter Thiel's actions.

It's the one that we wrote about the most: Shiva Ayyaudrai claims to have invented email when he was a kid.
He did not. I won't go through all the details again, but as a kid in 1978, Ayyadurai did apparently create (independently) a software program for electronic mail for a college he worked for. By all accounts, it was a good program that was useful. He named it EMAIL and eventually registered a copyright for that piece of software. That's it. It's a neat accomplishment for a kid. But it is not "inventing email" by any stretch of the imagination.

That's because (1) every single thing that Ayyadurai did had already been done elsewhere, often many years earlier, and (2) all of that other work was done in public settings via RFCs and the process that eventually led to the email systems that we use today. Ayyadurai's email system... contributed to nothing. It was late to the game and it never went any further. Again, it was impressive that as a kid he basically independently created an electronic mailing system, but that's different from "inventing email." But, for whatever reason, Ayyadurai has staked his entire identity on the outright false claim that he invented email. He's written a book about it. He has a whole webpage about it. And he keeps pushing the story on the press, including teaming up with a famous PR guy and (???) Noam Chomsky to argue that there was a giant conspiracy to deny him his rightful designation as the inventor of email. He often claims this is because he's of Indian descent, ignoring that one of the actual inventors of email, on RFC 561 is Abhay Bhushan (who also created FTP) and is, also, of Indian descent.

Ayyadurai is so obsessed with his false claim of creating email, that he even went on a petulant Twitter rampage after one of the actual creators of email, Ray Tomlinson, passed away earlier this year, yelling at any journalist who accurately credited Tomlinson's work on email.

Along with us, one of the other publications that highlighted Ayyadurai's bullshit claims was... Gawker. And, then, in May Ayyadurai sued Gawker using Charles Harder as his lawyer, over two Gawker articles on Ayyadurai. Those articles were completely accurate. Ayyadurai did not invent email. He wants the world to believe he did, despite mountains of evidence that says he's wrong. Gawker's reporting was entirely accurate. This is not about "sex tapes" or "privacy" or any of the stuff people want to talk about with the Hulk Hogan story. This was exposing someone who was blatantly misrepresenting history for his own personal aggrandizing.

And now it's gone, because continuing to fight the lawsuit was too much. As Denton notes:

But all-out legal war with Thiel would have cost too much, and hurt too many people, and there was no end in sight.


Denton notes that, especially given the reporters who were directly sued in these cases, it was best to just move on to "focus on activities more productive than endless litigation. Life is short, for most of us."

That's true, but it's also bullshit. Ayyadurai has been given the heckler's veto and will likely crow about how this vindicates him. He's tried to twist a variety of other things as "proof" that he's the inventor of email. As of writing this he hasn't said anything on his Twitter feed, other than to retweet someone saying "congratulations to [Shiva], inventor of email" and someone else tweeting about the Denton story. Of course, perhaps because he's too busy promoting some sketchy "health" system and conspiracy theories about the election -- oh, and also having conversations with confirmed asshole and colleague in bullshit, censorious lawsuits, actor James Woods.

Image

So, not only is he not the inventor of email, he's also pretty clueless about how polls work and basic statistics too. Seems like a real winner.

Re: Shiva Ayyadurai suing TechDirt over Stories Saying He Di

PostPosted: Tue Feb 14, 2017 6:48 am
by admin
Here's The Truth: Shiva Ayyadurai Didn't Invent Email
from the let's-try-this-again dept
by Mike Masnick
Thu, Nov 3rd 2016

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


So, yesterday we wrote about how Nick Denton had settled all the remaining legal disputes that Gawker had involving three lawsuits filed by lawyer Charles Harder. Most of the attention was paid to the big one -- the settlement with Hulk Hogan. We, however, focused on one of the other cases, since it was one that we followed closely and which showed how Peter Thiel was full of shit in claiming he only bankrolled these anti-Gawker lawsuits to "protect privacy" (and, yes, it's hilarious to see the early backer of both Facebook and Palantir pretending to care about privacy).

What Is this "Privacy" of Which You Speak?

Some people live in the world as they wish it were. Want to find some of those people? Google the phrase "no constitutional right to privacy." You will find lots of articles proclaiming this to be the truth, but it is just plain wrong. Ten States' Constitutions protect the Right to Privacy, and Florida, where the Hogan trial is taking place, is one of them. [3] Article I, Section 23 of the Florida Constitution states in relevant part: "Every natural person has the right to be let alone and free from governmental intrusion into the person's private life except as otherwise provided herein." Take note that the first part of the sentence protects the "right to be let alone," and while the second part of the sentence seems to limit the effect of Sec. 23 to protection from "governmental intrusion," this is in fact the place where it is most needed in the forty states that lack such a constitutional protection. [5]

This phrase "the right to be let alone" has a history. It was coined by Thomas M. Cooley in his law treatise, "Law of Torts," first published in 1880. [6] The phrase was adopted by Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis in a Harvard Law Review article published in 1890, because Warren had been suffering from attacks in the press. This article popularized the idea, which motivated judges to recognize a right to privacy under certain circumstances, and moved legislatures to enact statutes that gave the victims of privacy invasion the right to sue for damages.

There are four types of privacy invasion lawsuits, all of which can be pursued in Florida, as well as California and many other states: (1) appropriation of name or likeness (stealing publicity), (2) intrusion into private spaces (peeping and spying),(3) public disclosure of private facts (spreading embarrassing truths), and (4) publicizing true facts that cast the victim in a false light (very similar to the previous type of claim, but the misleading facts need not have been private).

-- It Takes A Lot to Laugh (It Takes A Train to Cry): The Tragedy of Hulk Hogan, by Charles Carreon


The case of Shiva Ayyadurai is the really telling one. For almost five years now, we've been among those explaining why Shiva Ayyadurai's claim that he invented email is complete bullshit. It's not true. Not even remotely. What does appear to be true is that as a fairly bright kid, Ayyadurai was working for a small college in New Jersey and he wrote an electronic messaging program for the school, which he named Email. It was not the first. It was not the last. It was nothing special. Nothing about what Ayyadurrai did was new -- even if he came up with the ideas entirely on his own. Basically every feature that he put in the application was previously discussed on open mailing lists and RFCs about the internet and the messaging systems that would be grafted onto it -- sometimes many years earlier. Ayyadurai tries to rely on the fact that he got a copyright for his program as proof, hoping to confuse people who don't understand the difference between a copyright and a patent. As we've noted in the past: Microsoft has a copyright on the "Windows" operating system. That doesn't mean it invented windows-based graphical user interfaces (because it did not).

Apparently, part of the settlement involved Ayyadurai getting $750,000 along with the agreement to take down the article (it's not entirely clear to me if the article was still up, since Univision had already taken it down). As plenty of people quickly noted on Twitter this was insane. Ayyadurai has spent many years falsely claiming to have invented email and trying to tarnish the obituaries of Ray Tomlinson who was critical in the creation of email (though was humble enough to admit that no one individual actually "invented" email). And now he was getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for suing a news site that correctly explained the actual truth: Shiva Ayyadurai did not invent email. I'm sure a good chunk of that money is going to Charles Harder. Who knows if any of it makes its way back to Peter Thiel, who recently explained that he had to help Hulk Hogan because mere "single digit millionaires" couldn't fight back.

In response to this, Ayyadurai has put out a self-congratulatory press release claiming that the settlement supports his blatantly false claims:

Certain of the settlement terms are incorporated within Gawker Media's latest proposed plan of liquidation, filed today, and include a proposed settlement payment to Dr. Ayyadurai and removal of the article at issue. More details will be forthcoming. Dr. Ayyadurai stated: "History will reflect that this settlement is a victory for truth."


No, it's not. It's a victory for bullshit. It's a victory for trying to rewrite history and smear the actual truth. And it was aided by Peter Thiel. I do wonder, though, if Ayyadurai continues to sue publications that properly point out that he is not telling the truth, and targets us, if Thiel will come to our aid. Hell, I'm not even a single-digit millionaire. So, clearly, he's going to help us out, right?

Let's discuss some truth: Ayyadurai did not invent email. Ayyadurai also filed a highly questionable lawsuit over a news story correctly claiming he did not invent email. Ayyadurai's case was only settled because Nick Denton and what remains of Gawker recognized that it was easier to move on with things and end these cases. For Peter Thiel to champion this and for Ayyadurai to claim that his little spat -- which got caught up in the whirlwind of a billionaire's personal grudge -- is a "victory for truth" is complete bullshit. That's the truth.

Re: Shiva Ayyadurai suing TechDirt over Stories Saying He Di

PostPosted: Tue Feb 14, 2017 6:53 am
by admin
Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
from the reign-of-the-anonymous dept
by Leigh Beadon
Sun, Nov 6th 2016 12:00pm

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


This week, we faced a disastrous plan from the Copyright Office to strip thousands of sites of their DMCA safe harbor protections if they don't re-register with a new system. We suggested that the correct way would be to engage in a proactive campaign rather than holding people's feet over the fire, and Cowardly Anonymous won most insightful comment of the week by going one step further:

No. The correct way is to give DCMA safe harbour to *all*. Blanketed. No registration required.


In the second place spot, we've got I. T. Guy with another simple response to the whole mess:

Dumbest thing I have ever heard of.

Don't forget to go register for your First Amendment rights now.


For editor's choice on the insightful side, we start out with an anonymous comment on the subject of police abuse, making the interesting observation that the "bad apples" metaphor gets thrown around in very different ways depending on the subject:

To quote a couple recent argument used by some US politicians to reject the acceptance of ANY Syrian refugees into the US.

- If you have a 5 pound bag of peanuts and 10 peanuts in the bag are deadly poisonous, would you feed them to your kids? -


And

- If a bowl of skittles had 3 poisonous ones in it would you eat from it? -

When it comes to accepting refugees this is an argument that should entice people to reject them all but somehow the same argument keeps being made about the police whit totally different expectations. That we should totally accept all of them no questions asked even though there is overwhelming evidence that we have more than a few bad apples causing actual deaths rather than the metaphorical ones implied by the politicians arguments for rejecting refugees...


Next, we head to our surprising post about Shiva Ayyadurai (surprising in that he's still trying) — which will be the source of both our winners on the funny side — where another anonymous commenter laid things out in detail:

Here's a link to the v6 manual page for mail:

http://wwwlehre.dhbw-stuttgart.de/~helb ... /mail.html

(Incidentally, note that the "see also" portion of this man page references "write" -- an instant messaging program. Yeah. In 1975.)

Here's a link to a well-researched page about Ayyadurai's bogus, lying, totally false claims:

http://www.sigcis.org/ayyadurai

Here's an entire web site about the history of email:

http://emailhistory.org/

Here's Tom Van Vleck's well-researched history of email:

http://multicians.org/thvv/mail-history.html

I just took the time to search some archives to see if fraudster Ayyadurai actually showed up anywhere. I can find no trace of his alleged source code in any of the standard repositories of the time, e.g., Usenet's net.sources or successor newsgroups such as comp.sources.misc. I find no trace of him in any of the RFCs, the standards documents which trace the history and evolution of email. I find no messages from him in any of the mailing lists discussing mail, SMTP (the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol), mail servers, mail clients, mail system operations, or anything else. To contrast and compare: there are THOUSANDS of message from many of the key contributors and hundreds of thousands more from people who had a problem or solved a problem, found a bug or published a fix, encountered a configuration issue or published a how-to. Ayyadurai simply doesn't exist at all - which isn't surprising, because his piffling and unimportant project existed in isolation and contributed precisely zero to the development of email.

Ayyadurai is particularly annoying because of his bogus claims of racism: those of us who were actually there know that the ARPAnet and CSnet and Usenet and BITnet were built by ridiculously diverse groups of people: just look at the names on the documents and the software. Ayyadurai's claims are annoying and absolutely false: they're a cheap stunt designed to make him appear the victim, and they're insulting to everyone who actually has been disadvantaged because of their race or ethnicity.

And he's annoying because of his willingness to take credit from those who did the heavy lifting -- Ray Tomlinson being one of them. All of those people have eschewed credit, preferring to see their work as building on that of others and minimizing their own contributions. Ayyadurai has seized on this to claim everything for his own, when in fact he contributed nothing of value or interest.

I kinda hope he sues TechDirt, because the discovery process will be fascinating. He will face dozens, if not hundreds, of subject-matter experts -- people like me who have been running real mail servers (not his bogus, worthless tripe) for decades. People who wrote the code. People who wrote the standards. People who have archives of all of this going back 20, 30, 40 years. People who are willing to invest a lot of time stacking supporting evidence to the ceiling and giving expert first-hand testimony.

Ayyadurai is a liar. He is a fraud. He is a charlatan. He is an unimportant nobody who has contributed nothing and deserves to be remembered as a posing, self-aggrandizing asshole -- nothing more.


But of course, at this point, such lengthy explanations feel almost pointless — they clearly have no effect on Ayyadurai himself, anyway. So we head to our first place comment on the funny side, where another anonymous commenter reiterated the simple fact:

You forgot to mention that Shiva Ayyadurai did not invent email.


In second place on the funny side, we have yet another anonymous commenter suggesting a way to honor Ayyadurai:

We need a "Shiva Ayyadurai Didn't Invent Email Day" where we all spam the dude with stories, posts, et al of how he didn't invent email.

We will call this day... Everyday.


For editor's choice on the funny side, we start with a comment from sorrykb presenting a new wrinkle to the Copyright Office conspiracy theory:

Admit it, Masnick, you and Google both are paid shills for Big Library.


Finally, after the Thai government demanded that a chat app reveal any users who insult the king, one more anonymous commenter interpreted that in the silliest way possible:

I don't really see why Thailand needs to know if someone insults Elvis.


That's all for this week, folks!

Re: Shiva Ayyadurai suing TechDirt over Stories Saying He Di

PostPosted: Tue Feb 14, 2017 6:56 am
by admin
Actual Creators Of Email Not At All Happy The Fake Creator Of Email Got Paid For His Bogus Claim
from the as-they-should-be dept
by Mike Masnick
Mon, Nov 7th 2016

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


As we noted last week, Shiva Ayyadurai, a guy who didn't invent email but has built his entire reputation on the false claim that he did, was able to cash in on the settlement agreed to by Nick Denton to end all of the Charles Harder-related lawsuits against Gawker. Again, Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, because of a personal grudge against Gawker, set up lawyer Charles Harder on a retainer, basically agreeing to help fund any lawsuit against Gawker that might help destroy the company. Harder filed a few, but the big one was the one filed by Hulk Hogan. Hogan won that (after losing the first few attempts and then going jurisdiction shopping for a court that would side with him). Almost everyone with any knowledge of the law agreed it was likely the verdict would lose on appeal (the appeals court had already ruled earlier on this case in favor of Gawker). Either way, Denton finally settled the case rather than push on, because of the cost of defending it and because Thiel had promised to keep funding the case as far as it would go. And, of course, it wasn't just that one case.

The Ayyadurai case was the most ridiculous of all. Ayyadurai did not invent email by any stretch of the imagination, but likes to go around falsely claiming he did, and smearing those who actually did the work. Thomas Haigh, a historian who keeps the most canonical explanation of Ayyadurai's misleading claims (including how they continue to morph and change and evolve over time) has the full story, but Gawker, among many others (including us) pointed out that he did not invent email. That led Ayyadurai and Charles Harder to sue Gawker -- presumably because (1) the Gawker/Harder/Thiel thing and (2) because Gawker used inflammatory language. The "settlement" meant that Ayyadurai got $750,000, though we're guessing a decent chunk of that likely went to Harder. Ayyadurai, somewhat ridiculous, put out a press release laughably claiming that "this settlement is a victory for truth." It's not. It's the opposite. It's a victory for the opposite of truth and shows how abusing the legal system can get you paid out -- especially when there's a billionaire willing to help fund the questionable lawsuits.

Anyway, it appears that those who were actually involved in the creation of email are pretty damn upset by this turn of events and are speaking out. If you go back to the early RFC on the creation of email, like 524, 561, 680 and 724 and 733, you see that all of the key concepts in email were being publicly discussed and implemented prior to Ayyadurai writing his email program in 1978.

One of the authors of those last two RFCs (724 and 733) is David Crocker, and he's not pleased with Ayyadurai trying to rewrite him out of the history of email -- and especially not with Ayyadurai getting a ton of cash for doing so. For what it's worth, Crocker and Ayyadurai have tangled before -- when Ayyadurai took some comments from Crocker so out of context to be borderline fraudulent (Ayyadurai took two separate sentences, that were separated by pages in a report Crocker wrote, totally out of context to falsely imply that Crocker said that no one was working on email in 1977). As you can imagine, Crocker is not pleased with the latest windfall for Ayyadurai.

Dave Crocker, who helped write several foundational standards documents about messaging over the internet, told Gizmodo that Ayyadurai’s settlement with Gawker Media represents a victory for a version of the history of email’s development that isn’t supported by evidence. “I grew up being taught that the truth is always a sufficient defense against claims of defamation,” Crocker said upon hearing about the settlement. “Given the extensive documentation about the history of email, I’m sorry to find that that the adage no longer holds true.”


Gizmodo also spoke to one of his co-authors, John Vittal, who first implemented features like "reply" and "forward," and he also found the whole thing baffling.

John Vittal, one of Crocker’s co-authors, seconded his frustration. Vittal is best known in the traditional history of email for being the first person to implement “reply” and “forward” functions. “What’s true is true, and you can’t hide from it, and shouldn’t be able to capitalize on thwarting it,” said Vittal. “To me, it’s a sad day.”


Meanwhile, it appears that throughout all of this, Ayyadurai continues to fool people. I had missed this, but earlier this year, he actually got onto CBS with comedian Mo Rocca on his "Henry Ford's Innovation Nation" in which Rocca falls hook, line and sinker for the bogus claims by Ayyadurai. CBS, of course, happens to also be the home of Walter O'Brien, whose origin story is quite similar to Ayyadurai's. Either way, as long as Ayyadurai continues to falsely hold himself out as the inventor of email, when he is not, people should continue to call out that his claims are simply false.

Re: Shiva Ayyadurai suing TechDirt over Stories Saying He Di

PostPosted: Tue Feb 14, 2017 8:02 am
by admin
Huffington Post Finally Responds, Stands By Its Completely Bogus, Totally Debunked 'History Of Email' Series
from the destroying-all-journalistic-integrity dept
by Mike Masnick
Thu, Sep 4th 2014 9:20am

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


Over the past couple of days we've been writing about an incredibly questionable series of articles at Huffington Post, pretending to be about the "history of email" even though they're not. They're actually a completely bogus rewriting of well-documented history to falsely pretend that a guy named V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai invented email as a 14-year-old boy. He did not. Not only do Ayyadurai and some of his friends totally misrepresent reality, they fraudulently make claims that are easily debunked. As we've discussed, their two biggest claims are (1) that the "US government officially recognized Ayyaudurai as the inventor of email" in 1982 and (2) that a leading analysis of electronic messaging in 1977, by Dave Crocker at RAND, claims that a full interoffice email system is "impossible." Both of these claims are absolutely false.

As we've explained, the first one relies on blatantly misleading people about what a copyright is and what Ayyadurai copyrighted. Copyright does not cover "inventions." It only covers creative expression. What Ayyadurai got a copyright on is a specific computer program called "email." That does not mean he invented email. Just as Microsoft holds a copyright on "Windows" but did not invent windowed user interfaces, Ayyadurai did not invent email. The copyright does not mean that he did invent email, and the fact that he and his friends continue to pretend that a copyright is something it is not is farcical. They are relying on the ignorance of reporters and the public about what a copyright is. The second issue is even more damaging. Ayyadurai and his friends claim that Crocker's paper is the "smoking gun" that proves that no one else was working on a full email system at the time. And yet, as we noted, they never actually link to the paper. We did. You can read it here, and you see that not only does it say the exact opposite of what they claim (debunking Ayyadurai's claims), they deliberately misrepresent what Crocker said by taking two separate sentences, from different pages in the report, removing the context around them, and mashing them together to pretend they say something they do not. It's shameless.

Since the system is to be used for communication which is exemplified in older and heavily-exercised technology, it is assumed that users have an extensive conceptual model of the communication domain. It is further assumed that a system which performs in ways which deviate from that model will be viewed as "idiosyncratic" and impeding the efforts of the user. Problems occurring during this sort of interaction can be expected to be as irritating as having a pen which leaks or a typewriter with keys that jam. Therefore, a major design goal for MS is to provide an integrated set of necessary and sufficient functions which conform to the target user's cognitive model of a regular office-memo system. At this stage, no attempt is being made to emulate a full-scale inter-organization mail system....

The level of the MS project effort has also had a major effect upon the system's design. To construct a fully-detailed and monolithic message processing environment requires a much larger effort than has been possible with MS. In addition, the fact that the system is intended for use in various organizational contexts and by users of differing expertise makes it almost impossible to build a system which responds to users' needs. Consequently, important segments of a full message environment have received little or no attention and decisions have been made with the expectation that other Unix capabilities will be used to augment MS. For example, MS has fairly primitive data-base management (i.e., filing and cataloging) facilities and message folders have been implemented in a way which allows them to be modified by programs, such as text editors, which access them directly, rather than through the message system.

-- Framework and Functions of the "MS" Personal Message System: A Report prepared for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, by David H. Crocker


In our first post, we claimed that perhaps it's true that Ayyadurai was the first person to shorten "electronic mail" (which was in widespread use at the time) to "email" -- but now even that has been called into question. Computer historian Thomas Haigh has been tracking Ayyadurai's lies and misrepresentations for years, and alerts us to the fact that Ayyadurai's story has notably changed over the years, revealing additional misrepresentations and attempts to change history. This includes, among other things, him changing his story about when he completed his work -- and when his program "email" was named. Here's Haigh's analysis:

“Electronic mail” was widely discussed in the 1970s, but was usually shortened simply to “MAIL” when naming commands. However, the Oxford English Dictionary (3rd edition online) gives a June 1979 usage (“Postal Service pushes ahead with E-mail”) so Ayyadurai was not the first to use this contraction in print.

The program name “EMAIL” is not mentioned in the 1980 newspaper article on Ayyadurai but does appear in his 1981 Westinghouse competition submission. By that year the name EMAIL was in use by CompuServe. Compuserve had offered timesharing computer access and electronic mail to businesses for years. In 1979 it launched a new service, aiming to sell otherwise wasted evening computer time to consumers for the bargain price of $5 an hour. A trademark application (later abandoned) that CompuServe made for “EMAIL” listed 1981/04/01 as its first use by the company, which fits with this May 1981 message mentioning CompuServe’s “EMAIL program.” By January 1983 “Email™” (for trademark) was part of CompuServe’s advertising campaign.

For years CompuServe users could type “GO EMAIL” to read their messages. Whether Ayyadurai or CompuServe was the first to adopt “EMAIL” as a program name it is clear that CompuServe popularized it.


Furthermore, Haigh details how Ayyadurai has conveniently tried to rewrite his own history to counter the debunkings. For example, in 2011, he originally claimed that while he was "challenged" to create an electronic interoffice messaging system in 1978, he didn't actually get it to work until 1980. But, of course, by then email was much more widespread. So, Ayyadurai changed the story, and pretended that he was both challenged and wrote his "50,000 lines of code" and got it all working in 1978. Furthermore, as we noted in our second post, Ayyadurai and his friends are now trying to rewrite history to ignore all those other previous email systems by tightly defining what an email system is such that only his qualifies. But, as we noted, most of the features he listed are arbitrary and unrelated to the basics of email. All of the core elements of email were widely used before Ayyadurai wrote his system. Haigh details how Ayyadurai has taken this to absolutely ridiculous extremes, claiming that it's not email unless it has 87 specific features (up from 32, which was ratcheted up from an original 6 -- as he continues to revise history):

One of the five main tabs on Ayyadurai’s new site is “Definition of email.” This presents a short version (“email is the electronic version of the interoffice, inter-organizational paper-based email system”) and two lengthy checklists. The first checklist presents 32 distinct features of the traditional mail system, all of which he claims were necessary (“if any one component was taken away … you no longer had a functioning interoffice mail system.”) The second checklist repeats these, with some additional items added, and places a check mark by each one to indicate that Ayyadurai’s system had that capability. There are 87 of these check marks. If I understand his argument correctly then this signifies that a system must possess 87 specific features to properly be called email.

Has this definition been widely accepted since 1978, as Ayyadurai claims? No it has not. Indeed, Ayyadurai’s own website did not include these definitions of email until recently. The old site (prior to June 2012) offered a quite different six point definition of “an E-Mail System.” These six points were: User-Friendly Interface; A Rich Set of Features; Network Wide; Security and Login; Enterprise Management; Database and Archival. The definition was originally presented as the work of one Matthew J. Labrador. Labrador claims to have “met Shiva in 1981 in a computer science class” and to have been impressed by his modesty. He recently been motivated by inaccurate reports on email origins to “do my own research… to provide readers with a more comprehensive and holistic history.” Ayyudari’s resume lists Labrador as a student whose bachelor’s thesis he supervised in 1990. Labrador, whose prose style closely resembles Ayyadurai’s own, expressed awe at Ayyadurai’s accomplishments (“in writing this History, I was amazed at the vision that Dr. V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai had even as a 13 year old, in developing that first E-Mail system”), acknowledged his graciousness in providing materials, and proceeded to show that Ayyadurai’s system met this unorthodox six point definition.


Either way, given the abundant evidence that Ayyadurai's claim is complete bullshit, we were still left amazed that Huffington Post has allowed this to remain on its site.

Late yesterday, a PR person from Huffington Post finally got back to me, claiming they did not get my original email. Huffington Post not only stupidly stands by the completely false story, it claims that the matter is okay because they've "updated each piece with a clarification." The clarification is not a "clarification" and it's not an apology for publishing a totally bullshit series. It's merely a repeating of Ayyadurai's lies. Incredibly, they repeat his exact language, suggesting the "clarification" is either from him directly, or taken from the claims in the bogus articles.

*Clarification about the series: Electronic messaging predates email. To paraphrase Noam Chomsky in 2012, email, spelled uppercase or lowercase, as defined in 1978, was a computer program which was the first full-scale electronic version of the interoffice mail system (Inbox, Outbox, Drafts, Folders, Attachments, etc.), containing the integrated features of what we experience today in "email" programs. However, this is not to imply that prior to the invention of email in 1978, simple methods of computer-to-computer or device-to-device electronic messaging did not exist. In fact such methods of sending text messages electronically -- text messaging -- could be said to date back to the Morse code telegraph of the mid-1800s; or the 1939 World's Fair where IBM sent a message of congratulations from San Francisco to New York on an IBM radio-type, calling it a "high-speed substitute for mail service in the world of tomorrow." The original text message, electronic transfer of content or images, ARPANET messaging, and even the familiar "@" sign were used in primitive electronic computer-to-computer messaging systems. While the technology pioneers who created these messaging systems should be heralded for their efforts, and given credit for their specific accomplishments and contributions, these early computer-to-computer messaging programs were clearly not email, the system of interconnected parts intended to emulate the interoffice mail system. There is much credit to spread around to the vast community of academic, industrial and military researchers and engineers who eclipsed the industrial revolution with their contributions to computer science and computer and network engineering. There is no intention to take credit where it is not due. However, email as we know and experience it today, not electronic messaging, was first created in 1978 at UMDNJ.


Except, this is equally misleading. The systems in place long before 1978 absolutely were "electronic mail" and absolutely "emulated the interoffice mail system." "Email as we know it" was absolutely not first created at 1978 at UMDNJ and any basic reading of the actual documentation would prove that. I asked Huffington Post's PR people if they really wanted to make this statement, pointing out that it would only make them look silly. For reasons I cannot fathom, they appear to be standing by it and have not yet replied.

Furthermore, this completely misleading and factually bogus "clarification" has not, in fact, been placed on all of the articles in this series. This HuffPost Live article by Emily Tess Katz does not include it at all, but rather repeats many long-disproved claims by Ayyadurai. Apparently Katz tweeted that she stands behind the article, but later deleted that tweet. I asked her again last night if she still stood by the article, but, par for the course, she has not replied.

Huffington Post's PR people further told me that (1) it had not received any money for publishing the series (i.e., it's not a sponsored post) and (2) that "the authors declared no financial interest." Oh really? As I've pointed out, Larry Weber is one of the biggest names in PR. He didn't just magically decide to write an entire series of blatant falsehoods about the history of email. In fact, it didn't take much sleuthing to discover that Ayyadurai and Weber are business partners in "EchoMail", the company that Ayyadurai also likes to insist was a major part of email's history (it wasn't). Ayyadurai claims that EchoMail "grew to nearly $200 million in market valuation" but provides no evidence for that. Was the company public? Where does this valuation come from? For such an important company, you'd think there'd be a lot more information online about it, but there's basically none. The Wikipedia page for it says that EchoMail is a "subsidiary of General Interactive, but was initially developed under Information Cybernetics." The only "citation" to support these claims is this page at General Interactive. However, General Interactive appears to just be yet another (in an increasingly long list) of websites of questionable businesses that appear to do nothing but promote... V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai.

For such a big company, you'd assume there'd be some press reports somewhere. So far, I can find none. It's possible they exist, but they are not readily available. It's not hard, however, to find news reports on other big companies of that generation. Either way, Echomail notes that companies like American Express and IBM are customers. It somehow leaves out that the only confirmation I can find of this is a lawsuit EchoMail filed against both companies in 2005. So, at least they were customers, though it doesn't appear to have ended on friendly terms.

Basically, no matter where you start to dig in, nearly everything about Ayyadurai's claims is incredibly sketchy, or outright disproven and debunked widely. It's incredible that Huffington Post has decided to stand by this and merely repeat debunked claims. Even if, as some have claimed, the posts by Weber, Ayyadurai and their friends are on the "unedited" blogs section of HuffPo, the HuffPo Live pieces are a part of the "news" business, and they are reporting blatantly false information.

As per usual, Ayyadurai himself refuses to address any of this other than pointing back to the same debunked claims. His Twitter feed is hilarious, just constantly repeating claims, in a foot stamping manner, sometimes referring to himself in the third person.

Image

No evidence, no support. And, of course, BBN doesn't claim to have "invented email." Like pretty much everyone else, BBN notes that it was among those who made significant contributions to a large group effort that became email.

Oh, and there's also this amusing tweet in which Ayyadurai appears to be implying that we're paid off by Raytheon for writing this.

Image

We're curious if Ayyadurai would like to try to present any evidence that a giant defense contractor is paying us off to (1) explain basic copyright law and (2) point to the actual 1977 paper that Ayyadurai himself totally misrepresents. Because we'd like to see him try.

In the meantime, the folks over at Huffington Post (the ones who still believe in journalistic integrity) might want to take a closer look at what's going on over there.

Re: Shiva Ayyadurai suing TechDirt over Stories Saying He Di

PostPosted: Tue Feb 14, 2017 9:09 am
by admin
Another Story Of A 'Fake' Brilliant Inventor? Is 'Scorpion Walter O'Brien' A Real Computer Security Genius?
from the more-of-this-crap? dept
by Mike Masnick
September 25, 2014

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


There's apparently a new TV show on CBS called Scorpion that has received mixed-to-decent reviews. It supposedly is about some computer security geniuses/outcasts who help "solve complex, global problems." However, Annalee Newitz's description of the stupidest, most batshit insane hacker scene ever from the first episode, suggests that the show is not worth watching. In the past few years, it had been kind of nice to see Hollywood actually seem to have some clue about accurately portraying hacking in some situations, but that's all apparently been tossed out the window with Scorpion. Even if you don't read Newitz's story (or view the video clip), just know it involves an ethernet cable hanging from a flying plane with a car racing beneath it to download some backup software needed by the airport so planes can land. Yeah.

A big part of the show's marketing is the claim that the story is partially based on the life of one of the show's executive producers, Walter O'Brien. CBS News has an article talking up these claims of O'Brien's amazing feats, helping out its parent company, CBS, who broadcasts the show. But... for such a "genius," many of O'Brien's claims are coming under scrutiny, and they're not holding up well. Having just gone through the whole Shiva Ayyadurai / inventor of email crap, it's beginning to sound like a similar case of someone pumping up their own past for publicity purposes.

The claims about O'Brien are both odd and oddly specific. Here's CBS's reporting:

Walter O’Brien has the fourth highest IQ in the world.


Elsewhere, he claims that he was "diagnosed as a child prodigy with an IQ of 197." First off, there are significant questions about IQ as a particularly useful measurement of anything. Furthermore, the idea that there's some definitive list of those with the highest IQs seems equally questionable. A quick Google search will show you a whole bunch of "top 10 lists" of IQs -- all of them different, and none of them including anyone named Walter O'Brien.

O'Brien's story started unraveling when he made the somewhat unwise decision to do a Reddit AMA. Redditors are pretty good at sniffing out completely bogus claims, and it didn't take them long here. Also, Asher Langton has been doing a bang up job debunking basically every claim that O'Brien makes.

Among other things, O'Brien's story claims that he began Scorpion Computer Services in the mid-1980s and that "Scorpion has mitigated risk for 7 years on $1.9 trillion of investments and has invented and applied Artificial Intelligence engines to protect United States war fighters in Afghanistan." It's not even entirely clear what that means.
It goes on:

Since 1988, Scorpion's team of world class experts partner with clients on a global basis, across industries, to add real measurable value in mission-critical initiatives from planning, to execution, to running the business. Scorpion's senior management has a collective knowledge of more than 413 technologies, 210 years in IT, and 1,360 projects. Scorpion himself has created over 177 unique technology inventions including ScenGen and WinLocX and is one of the world's leading experts in the application of computer science and artificial intelligence to solve complex industry challenges."


Again with the odd, and oddly specific claims. They have knowledge of 413 technologies? Do they have a list somewhere? Does it include the coffee machine in the lunch room? Did they send someone out to get the new iPhone 6 to make it 414? Either way, there are... just a few problems with these claims. As Langton points out, the "headquarters" of Scorpion Computer Services Inc. does not appear to be a particularly large or impressive company. Its headquarters is actually... a UPS store address That report notes that it has one employee, and revenue of $66k. It's possible that the report is inaccurate, but for such a big and successful company, you'd expect to see... at least a bit more historical evidence of its existence. But there is none.

And then there's this page (and here's the web archive version in case O'Brien figures out how to delete the old page), which apparently used to be the site for Walter's Scorpion computer Services, that, um, looks like it was built on GeoCities -- complete with the animated fire torches next to the dreadfully designed logo.

Image

For a big, massively successful company... you'd expect, um, something a bit more professional. Walter's own Linkedin profile notes that he actually worked at Capital Group for a while, with redditors claiming he was just a QA guy there, though his profile says he was a "technology executive." Many other claims on the company's website read like self-promotional gibberish. "We saved $43 billion in opportunity risks over a five-year period." "We invented an efficiency engine that performs 250 human years of work every 1.5 hrs with over 99% improvement over human error." By the way, the "see how" link on that last one doesn't actually show you "how" it just takes you to a page about how the company is a value added reseller "for proven IT products." The entire website looks like gibberish from someone trying to sound like a real tech company. It reminds me of Jukt Micronics.

Langton also turned up that O'Brien appears to have another "company" called Strike Force, using the same UPS Store address, and with very, very, very, very similar website design and bullshittery. That site has a really bizarre "what others say" page, listing out random referrals for O'Brien, which are generally just the standard empty "personal reference letters" people without much experience tend to ask some former colleagues for when looking for a new job. The first one is from Steven Messino (with the date conveniently stripped off) which looks like the generic job reference letter:

Image

Note that O'Brien claims that Messino is the co-founder of Sun. That's... not true. Anyone who knows anything about the history of Sun knows it was co-founded by Andy Bechtolsheim, Bill Joy, Scott McNealy and Vinod Khosla in 1982. Messino's own LinkedIn page shows he joined Sun in 1988. Six years after it was founded. Also, Sun had its IPO in 1986. So it's not like this was a small company when Messino joined... as a "regional sales manager."

Basically, everywhere you look, O'Brien's claims are either massively exaggerated to downright ridiculous.


There are also some odd personal claims about "Homeland Security" coming to find him as a 13-year old boy for hacking into NASA. Except, when he was 13, there was no Homeland Security -- an agency established after the September 11, 2001 attacks. O'Brien also claims this:

Scorpion was born and raised in Ireland, and at 16, ranked first in national high speed computer problem solving competitions. At 18, he competed in the World Olympics in Informatics and has ranked as high as the sixth fastest programmer in the world.


Sixth fastest programmer in the world? Really? Some folks on Reddit noted that it doesn't appear Ireland competed in the "International Olympiad in Informatics" in 1993, though someone else found a report from the University of Sussex, which O'Brien attended, noting that O'Brien had come in 6th in a different contest, but in the Olympiad itself, he came in 90th. I mean that's great for an 18 year old, but it hardly makes him into some programming genius.

And we won't even touch the claims that his programming helped catch the Boston Marathon bombers, because... well... really?

Frankly, the parallels with Ayyadurai and the email story are there. It certainly appears that, like Ayyadurai, O'Brien was a bright kid who did some impressive programming as a teenager, but then didn't appear to amount to all that much noteworthy beyond that. Try searching for any news references or evidence of O'Brien doing anything other than in the last few months in the publicity leading up to this new TV show. However, he is trying to reinvent himself and rewrite his history as some sort of genius programmer responsible for all sorts of amazing things, very little of which seems directly supportable. Of course, CBS doesn't really care, so long as they have a fun TV show that people watch, but at the very least, they shouldn't continue to spread the exaggerated myths about O'Brien that appear to have little basis in fact.

Re: Shiva Ayyadurai suing TechDirt over Stories Saying He Di

PostPosted: Sun Feb 19, 2017 4:52 am
by admin
V.A. Shiva Honored as the Inventor of Email
by Emi Kolawole
Washington Post
Feb 17, 2012

V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai spoke about the discovery he made at the age of 14, and his path from a New Jersey high school to the Smithsonian. ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... story.html redirects to: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... 4ed8cec83a

[DELETED FROM INTERNET
http://link.email.washingtonpost.com/r/ ... 278IF/50/h
HTTP Status 404 - Could not find the requested link
type Status report
message Could not find the requested link
description The requested resource (Could not find the requested link) is not available.
Status 404]

Re: Shiva Ayyadurai suing TechDirt over Stories Saying He Di

PostPosted: Mon Feb 20, 2017 5:38 am
by admin
Ray Tomlinson, Inventor Of Modern Email, Dies
by The Associated Press
March 6, 2016

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


V.A. SHIVA ✔ @va_shiva
I'm the low-caste, dark-skinned, Indian, who DID invent #email. Not Raytheon, who profits for war & death.Their mascot Tomlinson dies a liar
7:39 PM - 6 Mar 2016


Raymond Tomlinson, the inventor of modern email and selector of the "@" symbol, has died.

Raytheon Co., his employer, on Sunday confirmed his death; the details were not immediately available.

Email existed in a limited capacity before Tomlinson in that electronic messages could be shared amid multiple people within a limited framework. But until his invention in 1971 of the first network person-to-person email, there was no way to send something to a specific person at a specific address.

The first email was sent on the ARPANET system, a computer network that was created for the U.S. government that is considered a precursor to the Internet.
Tomlinson also contributed to its development.

At the time, few people had personal computers. The popularity of personal email wouldn't take off until years later but has become an integral part of modern life.

"It wasn't an assignment at all, he was just fooling around; he was looking for something to do with ARPANET," Raytheon spokeswoman Joyce Kuzman said of his creation of network email.

Tomlinson once said in a company interview that he created email "mostly because it seemed like a neat idea." The first email was sent between two machines that were side-by-side, according to that interview.

He said the test messages were "entirely forgettable and I have, therefore, forgotten them." But when he was satisfied that the program seemed to work, he announced it via his own invention by sending a message to co-workers explaining how to use it.

Tomlinson chose the "@" symbol to connect the username with the destination address and it has now become a cultural icon.

Why that symbol? Kuzman said Tomlinson was looking at the keyboard and needed something that would not otherwise be part of the address and that seemed to be a logical solution.

"It is a symbol that probably would have gone away if not for email," she said.

MoMA's Department of Architecture and Design added the symbol into its collection in 2010, with credits to Tomlinson.

Tomlinson held electrical engineering degrees from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Tomlinson was an inductee to the Internet Hall of Fame and recipient of numerous awards and accolades but was described as humble and modest.

"People just loved to work with him," Kuzman said. "He was so patient and generous with his time ... He was just a really nice, down-to-earth, good guy."

Tomlinson was hired by Bolt Beranek and Newman, known as BBN, in 1967. It was later acquired by Raytheon Co., where he still worked at the time of his death, as a principal scientist.

He lived in Lincoln, Massachusetts where he raised miniature sheep. Attempts to contact his family were unsuccessful.

While more general email protocols were later developed and adopted, Tomlinson's contributions were never forgotten.

"He was pretty philosophical about it all," Kuzman said. "And was surprisingly not addicted to email."

Re: Shiva Ayyadurai suing TechDirt over Stories Saying He Di

PostPosted: Mon Feb 20, 2017 5:54 am
by admin
History of Attacks on Dr. V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai, the Inventor of Email, from February 16, 2012 to November 12, 2014
by Sonu Abraham
International Center for Integrative Systems, Cambridge, MA 02138
Note: Originally published in June 2012. Additions made and retrieved in November 12, 2014

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


ABSTRACT

A group of industry insiders, “historians” and their media counterparts have carried out a brutal attack against the inventor of email to protect vested interests. This paper gives a description of incidents which give rise to these attacks and provides a timeline of these attacks. Attacks on Dr. V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai include not only defamation but also the spread of disinformation. The vested interests at Raytheon/BBN seek to own and control the narrative of where, when and by whom innovation can occur. The ownership of the Invention of Email as one of the key early applications of the digital age, gives them a competitive advantage in the Cyber-security market, which Raytheon/BBN spends substantially to control in the public sphere.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Abstract
II. Timeline of Attacks
III. Conclusion

TIMELINE OF ATTACKS

November 11, 2011: Time Magazine news story entitled, The Man Who Invented Email is released after Doug Aamoth, online Technology Editor, reviews primary sources and artifacts.

November 15, 2011: Dr. Ayyadurai begins discussion with David Thorburn, director of MIT Communications Forum, to host and moderate a panel on the “Future of the US Post Office”

December 15, 2011: Dr. Ayyadurai is invited to present a keynote/platform talk at EMBL in Germany on CytoSolve, a scalable system for dynamic integration of molecular pathway models.

January 11, 2012: International Center for Integrative Systems, a non-profit Center founded by Dr. Ayyadurai executes an Agreement with a major sponsor who has agreed to provide a substantial grant for Dr. Ayyadurai's research on Biomimetics of Media and Communications.

January 12, 2012: Boston Innovation writes a story on Dr. Ayyadurai's efforts to assist the US Postal Service (USPS). In response to this positive article, a blogger posts saying Dr. Ayyadurai is “a flagrant fraud” and not the inventor of email. This blogger then makes the false claim that he, the blogger is the inventor of email attachments in 1992. The first email system of 1978 already had attachments.

February 16, 2012: The Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, holds a special donation ceremony to accept the code, tapes, papers and artifacts on the invention of EMAIL.

February 17, 2012: In response to the donation ceremony, Washington Post writes an article “VA Shiva Ayyadurai honored as inventor of e-mail by Smithsonian”. The Post also posts several video interviews with Dr. Ayyadurai.

February 17-24, 2012: Tom Van Vleck updates his History of Electronic Mail site multicians.org site to include Ayyadurai's copyright for EMAIL in fine print on top of site. (Then later removes it). Van Vleck then conducts historical revisionism on his own site to credit Tomlinson, who Van Vleck had earlier repudiated with sarcastic comments exposing Tomlinson’s exaggeration as the “inventor of email”.

February 22, 2012: A blog TechDirt writes an article called “How The Guy Who Didn't Invent Email Got Memorialized In The Press & The Smithsonian As The Inventor Of Email”. TechDirt never reviewed the artifacts at the Smithsonian nor contacted Dr. Ayyadurai for any questions.

February 23, 2012: Gizmodo, owned by Gawker media, writes an article defaming Dr. Ayyadurai's picture with “Imposter”, and says that The Inventor of Email Did Not Invent Email? They have neither contacted Dr. Ayyadurai nor reviewed any of the artifacts at the Smithsonian. A SIGCIS “historian” rabidly attacks Dr. Ayyadurai. This historian also never reviewed any of the artifacts at the Smithsonian. They label Dr. Ayyadurai a “Fraud”. Gizmodo dismisses Dr. Ayyadurai's invention using false claims and misuse of the term email.

February 24, 2012: The Internet Society registers InternetHallOfFame.Org.

February 27, 2012: A SIGCIS “historian” states “VA Shiva Ayyadurai is one of the billions of people who didn't invent email. No hedges or qualifiers needed.” This “historian”, a part of industry insiders such as BBN, RAND, and DARPA rabidly attacks Dr. Ayyadurai while promoting false claims. The quality of his scholarship is questionable, given his primary references are Gizmodo and TechDirt. (See Gizmodo's approach to journalism.)

February 28, 2012: MIT Biological Engineering reappoints Dr. Ayyadurai as Lecture in Biological Engineering. Appointment is extended for an additional year until February 2013.

March 1, 2012: Washington Post ombudsman is pressured by David Crocker and Tom Van Vleck to “correct” article written on Dr. Ayyadurai by Emi Kolawole. Dr. Ayyadurai is never contacted by the Ombudsman. The ombudsman writes a “mea culpa”, which says ombudsman eats crow. The story references only Dr. Ayyadurai's detractors, and discrediting Dr. Ayyadurai's invention. Neither the ombudsman, Crocker, Van Vleck nor any of the other quoted sources have reviewed Dr. Ayyadurai's artifacts.

March 2, 2012: Washington Post agrees to carry two bylined articles by Dr. Ayyadurai and Prof. Noam Chomsky in a rebuttal format with two of Dr. Ayyadurai's detractors. The Post explicitly lays ground rules that neither article can have personal attacks, nor references, direct or indirect, to the other two parties. All parties agree to these ground rules.

March 5, 2012: Gizmodo publishes another article calling Dr. Ayyadurai “crazy”, “asshole”, “dick”, etc. saying he is exaggerating and not the inventor of email. This is a brutal defamatory and libelous attack. There are no references or primary sources, except “anonymous sources” at MIT. Gizmodo does not bother to review artifacts available at Smithsonian.

March 5 – March 30, 2012: A concerted effort is deployed by detractors of Ayyadurai on Wikipedia to defame and discredit him. His attribution to other work that he did beyond email is also defaced. For example, his name is removed from his early work with Prof. Robert Langer on Flow Visualization as well as his work with Prof. C. Forbes Dewey, Jr. in Systems Biology.

Fuck him. He's vermin. He's not forgivable. Let any good he has ever done be wiped out. Let the name 'Charles Carreon' be synonymous with petulant, amoral censorious douchebaggery."
-- Kenneth Paul White, Popehat.com


March 5, 2012: The Verge publishes an article called “Exposing the self-proclaimed inventor of email”. This article, again, has no primary sources, no interview with Dr. Ayyadurai and no review of artifacts and is merely a replication of the Gizmodo article.

March 6, 2012: Boston Innovation writes an article stating/implying that Dr. Ayyadurai is a fraud. The article is entitled “Did MIT Professor VA Shiva Ayyadurai Really Invent Email, Or Is He Just a Fraud?”. The article has no primary sources, no references, no interview with Dr. Ayyadurai and no review of artifacts and is just a Duplication of the Gizmodo article.

March 6, 2012: Boing Boing writes another defamatory and libelous article. This article states “He's generally described by his colleagues as a nut and fraud”—the terms “asshole,” and “loon” were tossed around freely by professors who were happy to talk about their coworker but prefer to remain anonymous”. This article has no primary sources, no references, no interview with Dr. Ayyadurai and no review of artifacts and is just a duplication of the Gizmodo article.

March 8, 2012: Internet Society issues a formal press release announcing the creation of the “Internet Hall of Fame”.

March 10, 2012: MIT CMS Director William Uricchio sends an email to Dr. Ayyadurai renouncing CMS’ affiliation with MIT Email Lab and asks Dr. Ayyadurai to remove “MIT” and pictures of two faculty, who had agreed to be part of the MIT Email LAB. Uricchio informed Ayyadurai that he receives news from the Provost' office concerning the Gizmodo news.

March 14, 2012: David Thorburn, the director of the MIT Communications Forum, informs Dr. Ayyadurai that he has been receiving numerous comments that he (Thorburn) should cancel the MIT Communications Forum, “The Future of the Post Office”. Thorburn states that he is under incredible pressure “all the recent news”.

March 14, 2012: David Crocker, one of Dr. Ayyadurai's detractors registers emailhistory.org to promote his “collaborative” history of “email”.

March 15, 2012: Emi Kolawole contacts Dr. Ayyadurai and informs him that one of the two detractors wishes to make personal attacks and refers Dr. Ayyadurai by name. She admits she has relaxed the originally agreed upon ground rules and tells Dr. Ayyadurai he “...can also attack...” his detractors. Dr. Ayyadurai and Prof. Chomsky do not want to participate in sensationalism and urges the Post to abide by the original ground rules.

March 15, 2012: Dr. Ayyadurai conducts and moderates MIT Communications Forum on the “Future of the US Post Office”. During the first part of the Forum, Thorburn discusses the email controversy with the audience. This discussion is edited out from the final video that is posted on the MIT Website. After the event, Thorburn tells Dr. Ayyadurai that Dr. Ayyadurai was wronged, thanks Dr. Ayyadurai for his great job and promises to initiate corrective action on behalf of Dr. Ayyadurai, so the facts of his invention of email can come out publicly. (To date Thorburn is yet to contact Dr. Ayyadurai.)

March 19, 2012: The Washington Post sends a terse note that they have decided not to run Dr. Ayyadurai's and Prof. Chomsky's bylined articles. They also state that they will not run the article written by SIGCIS "historian" who wanted to wage personal attacks. Only one of the detractors piece runs. Earlier the Post's editorial board had enthusiastically approved both Dr. Ayyadurai's and Prof. Chomsky's articles. Below is an email from one of the Post editors in reference to the bylined article of Dr. Ayyadurai which was approved.

Hi Shiva -

I think this is it. My senior editor read through the entire thing again and really liked it. He found your narrative compelling and graceful, and he's a tough (skeptical) audience. Please read through the entire piece again. I made a few minor edits in the top for copy editing and accuracy.

I know you are angry -- and rightfully so. The reflex to lash out is almost impossible to resist. But I believe you resisted it successfully here. This piece showcases your attention to detail, determination and grace under fire with no trace of hyperbole or vitriol -- and it will win over your audience, showcasing a stark contrast to the personal attacks and name-calling that have dominated in the comments on the Post Web site and elsewhere online. Those who have resorted to snark and invective will not expect this. Regardless of whether they agree with your claims, I believe you come out the bigger man, as the saying goes and many
will be forced to respect that.

I look forward to reading what everyone else writes, of course, but I have learned a great deal in working with you on this. I hope the process was rewarding for you as well.

Cheers and have a great weekend!

Emi Kolawole
Editor | Innovations & On Giving
The Washington Post


March 20, 2012: Tom Van Vleck, whose web site on the History of Email was earlier highly sarcastic of Tomlinson and exposed the fact that he did not invent email, began to conduct historical revisionism to drop sarcasm against Tomlinson and now present Tomlinson as "the inventor of email".

April 1, 2012: Dr. Ayyadurai receives an email, saying that his talk at EMBL in Germany on CytoSolve has been cancelled and he has been removed from the speaker line up. He asks for explanation and receives no response.

April 2, 2012: The President of the Sponsor company, which had agreed on January 11, 2012 to provide a substantial grant, sends a sudden email to Dr. Ayyadurai stating that they have received an anonymous email referencing the Gizmodo, Boston Innovation articles. The email states that Dr. Ayyadurai is a fraud, and imposter and brings to question his integrity.

April 9, 2012: Dr. Ayyadurai receives a notice from Sponsor indicating his credentials must be authenticated to show that he in fact has four degrees from MIT. The notice gives Dr. Ayyadurai less than 72 hours to respond or the grant will be cancelled. Dr. Ayyadurai's attorney contacts Sponsor and informs him that this is insulting.

April 9, 2012: MIT Biological Engineering Department Chairman sends Dr. Ayyadurai a note that his MIT Lectureship, which had been renewed for a period of 1-year Feb 2012 to Feb 2013, must now been rescinded. No clear reasons are given. A colleague informs Dr. Ayyadurai that the Gizmodo news became too "politically expensive" for the Chairman to keep Dr. Ayyadurai on an as a Lecturer.

April 11, 2012: William Uricchio interrupts Dr. Ayyadurai's tutorial class, concerned about call from Boston Magazine reporter. Dr. Ayyadurai has not seen Uricchio for nearly a month. Dr. Ayyadurai expresses his deep dismay at how Uricchio has behaved in acquiescing to the yellow journalism of Gizmodo. Uricchio's Civic Media group, ironically, gets funded by Knight Journalism Foundation to do research on bettering journalism.

April 16, 2012: A SIGCIS "historian" blogs with contents of the article that the Washington Post rejected. This article has little to do with email but more bent on simply discrediting Dr. Ayyadurai with false claims. This article appears to be a pre-emptive response to Boston Magazine's article due in late May 2012.

April 17, 2012: Dave Walden, former BBN employee, posts comment that he and his friends met with the reporter from Boston Magazine and set her “straight”.

April 23, 2012: The Internet Hall of Fame announces Ray Tomlinson as “inventor of e-mail”. This press release is sent from Raytheon/BBN.

April 23, 2012: The InternetHallofFame.Org website appears [to] have been built in short order by Raisedeye Brow.

April 24, 2012: Dr. Ayyadurai is removed from Van Vleck's "History of Electronic Mail" website. Earlier Dr. Ayyadurai had been recognized as the holder of the Copyright for EMAIL. Van Vleck has made other revisions to cast Tomlinson in a far better light than his earlier version displayed.

April 24, 2012: Press releases from Raytheon/BBN are picked up by the Boston Globe which reports Ray Tomlinson is the “inventor of e-mail”.

April 25-26, 2012: Press releases from Raytheon/BBN to Washington Post Style Section declare Tomlinson is the “godfather of email”. Similarly Mass High Tech states he is the “king of email”.

April 27, 2012: BBN web site reveals Raytheon/BBN's intentional branding to position themselves as innovators by juxtaposing the "@" symbol with Tomlinson’s picture as the “Inventor of Email”.

CONCLUSION

BBN has much to gain by continuing to misuse the term "email". Using false claims, industry insiders such as BBN and others believe that they can revise and alter history to ensure the facts of Dr. Ayyadurai's invention of email is discredited, so the public is confused into thinking that email existed prior to 1978.

About Sonu Abraham

Sonu Abraham has served as the Chief Operating Officer of EchoMail as well as the Executive Director of the International Center for Integrative Systems. Currently, he is the Chief Operating Officer of Sunshine Homecare Services. During the years 2012-2014 he has studied and documented in great detail the media coverage and reactions surrounding the Invention of Email.

© 2014. Sonu Abraham.