Huffington Post Finally Removes Most Articles About Fake Email Inventor; Meanwhile, Ayyadurai Threatens To Sue His Critics

from the did-he-invent-slapp-suits-too? dept

Mon, Sep 8th 2014 5:37am — Mike Masnick

Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai's Response to this Article and Statement on the Invention of Email

Over the weekend, it appears that someone at the Huffington Post finally realized that hoping the fuss over its entirely bogus "history of email" series would blow over wasn't going to happen. In case you missed it last week, we had called out Huffington Post for allowing Shiva Ayyadurai and his friends to post an entirely bogus "history of email" series, all designed to make it look like Ayyadurai himself had invented email -- a claim he's been making for a few years, despite it being entirely false, based on totally misrepresenting a number of things, including what copyright means, misquoting a 1977 research paper and playing "no true scotsman" over what is a "true" email system. Despite the evidence of how wrong Ayyadurai and his friends were, HuffPo allowed the series to go on with more false claims, and then told me it had "added a clarification" that didn't clarify anything, but was a statement written by Ayyadurai, repeating the false claims. On Friday, we wondered how Huffington Post could justify posting obviously false information.

It appears the powers that be at HuffPo finally realized that they had a problem.

All of the posts by Shiva Ayyadurai's friends, making the entirely false argument that he "invented email," have been removed from Huffington Post, redirecting people to this page with the following text:

The post that previously appeared in this space -- part of a blogger-generated series on the history of email -- is no longer available. Readers and media commentators alerted us to factual and sourcing issues in the series and, after an internal review, we removed it from the site.

There are some interesting language choices there. First, note that they admit that it was a "blogger-generated series," which is an attempt to distance the fake series, put together by Shiva Ayyadruai himself with PR guru Larry Weber, from Huffington Post's journalistic "news" side. Ayyadurai and Weber had been banking on the fact that most people don't realize that the blogging side of HuffPo has no editorial controls to pretend that the series had some sort of journalistic credibility. They appear to be promoting the fake articles everywhere, and some of their supporters have been trying to use the Huffington Post series as credible citations for Wikipedia (amusingly, one of their supporters kept trying to reject others pointing to my detailed debunkings by saying it doesn't count since I'm just a blogger -- ignoring that Weber, Ayyadurai and their friends were using HuffPo's blogging platform as well).

Of course, what that note also (conveniently) leaves out is that it wasn't just the "blogger-generated series" that was the problem and has been taken down. HuffPo Live (part of its "journalistic" side) also did a long interview with Ayyadurai, and had articles written up by reporters like Emily Tess Katz (who continues to ignore every question asked about this), repeating ridiculous claims from Ayyadurai about how his critics are just racists who don't like the fact that a "dark-skinned immigrant boy" invented email. Of course the reality is that it has nothing to do with racism, but rather the facts -- which Huffington Post journalists apparently didn't even think were worth the trouble of a quick Googling, to find where all of Ayyadurai's claims had long since been debunked.

Finally, HuffPo didn't actually take down all such articles. There's a blog post from 2013 by Deepak Chopra and Ayyadurai making the same claims that remains on the site. Ayyadurai is associated with Chopra and frequently uses his connection to Chopra as some sort of validation of his claims.

Amusingly, despite HuffPo PR people telling me to email them with any more questions last Wednesday, they ignored every question I sent them since then (with one exception which I'll get to below), and (of course) didn't bother to tell me they had pulled the series either, despite my sending a few questions about whether they intended to keep it up. Instead, a whole bunch of you -- the readers of this site -- let me know. It's almost as if HuffPo wished to sweep the whole thing under the rug.

Of course, one part of the problem may be that Ayyadurai is now claiming in the Economic Times of India that Arianna Huffington herself "commissioned" the series after hearing Ayyadurai give a talk. I asked HuffPo PR (and Arianna directly) if that was accurate and (finally) HuffPo PR got back to me to say that (once again) Ayyadurai is lying, and that "neither HuffPost nor Arianna 'commissioned' Shiva's series."

In that same Economic Times article, there's also the absolutely hilarious claim from Ayyadurai suggesting that he's considering legal action against his "critics."

Shiva Ayyadurai, the man in the middle of a raging controversy over his claims of being the inventor of email, doesn't want to go legal on his detractors but is looking for support from the public. "Lawsuits take a long time. If I have to pull the trigger I will. But I have decided to go directly to the people," Ayyadurai said in an interview with ET.

First off, there is no "raging controversy." There's no controversy at all. Ayyadurai is simply making false claims and that's agreed upon by pretty much everyone who's looked at the evidence. Second, "going to the people" is great, but historically he's done that with clearly bogus claims -- such as misquoting Dave Crocker's 1977 research and pretending that his 1982 copyright on his EMAIL software is the equivalent of a patent for the concept of email. So it's pretty easy to counter that, since the facts are not on his side. As for the idea of a lawsuit, I would hope that any lawyer he discusses a lawsuit with takes the time to look at the details here -- and also understand the laws around SLAPP suits and the nature of the First Amendment. Because I may not be "the inventor of email," but I can guess that any such lawsuits won't end well for Ayyadurai.

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Filed Under: arianna huffington, email, fraud, history, inventor of email, journalism, larry weber, lies, shiva ayyadurai, v.a. shiva ayyadurai
Companies: huffington post

76 Comments

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S. T. Stone, 8 Sep 2014 @ 5:54am

Damn. And here I am, thinking Arianna Huffington voicing a talking bear on one of Seth MacFarlane’s shows was the worst thing associated with the Huffington Post.
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Mike Acker (profile), 8 Sep 2014 @ 5:56am

commercial pubs
commercial pubs server their commercial masters and so also do political pubs serve also their political masters.

you would not expect to get an honest review of a Widget from a pub. which is taking advert. money from the company that makes Widgets.

today pubs often accept comments and such comments may help to shed the proper light on various subjects. and they do, at times. but at times good comments are flagged as "trolling" and trashed by the sys-admins.

the net bottom line is that each of us needs to "be our own man" -- not a "puppet on a string" -- manipulated by whatever public consensus can be blown up by advertisers and propagandists of the times.
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That One Guy (profile), 8 Sep 2014 @ 6:05am

Oh please let him find a stupid enough lawyer that he starts filing defamation claims, it would be insanely hilarious once he realized that truth is a defense against defamation, to then watch him scramble like mad to try and extricate himself from the mess before the evidence against him was put before a court.
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- Anonymous Coward, 8 Sep 2014 @ 6:21am
  
  Re:
  Take down your claims or pay for a lawyer is a form of blackmail, do not wish it on innocent parties just for your amusement.
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  - Michael, 8 Sep 2014 @ 6:33am
    
    Re: Re:
    Take down your claims or pay for a lawyer is a form of blackmail
    
    No, that is a description of the current state of US law.
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    - Anonymous Coward, 8 Sep 2014 @ 10:11am
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      Can't it be both?
      [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - That One Guy (profile), 8 Sep 2014 @ 7:26am
    
    Re: Re:
    More extortion than blackmail I'd say, and I wouldn't wish it on just anyone, just someone large enough, and well funded enough, to be willing and able to fight back.
    
    Ideally of course the moron would realize he's only digging the hole he's in even deeper by drawing attention to his exaggerations, misleading claims, and outright lies, leading to him shutting his mouth and hoping people go back to forgetting about him, but if he's going to insist on lawyering up, would be nice to see him get slammed in court, hard, by someone willing and capable of doing so.
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    - nasch (profile), 8 Sep 2014 @ 8:19pm
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      I wouldn't wish it on just anyone, just someone large enough, and well funded enough, to be willing and able to fight back.
      
      Why do you want whoever that is to divert a bunch of money to a useless lawsuit? It would clearly be better if nobody were sued over this.
      [ link to this | view in chronology ]
      - That One Guy (profile), 8 Sep 2014 @ 8:35pm
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re:
        Hence the second half. While the best case scenario is no-one being sued, if he's really that desperate to 'make an example' out of someone to try and silence his critics, it would be best if he went after someone willing and able to fight back, rather than someone who doesn't have the funds or ability to do so.
        [ link to this | view in chronology ]
        
        nasch (profile), 8 Sep 2014 @ 9:00pm
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
        Hence the second half.
        
        OK good, just making sure. :-)
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Sep 2014 @ 6:24am

do you think he will actually move forward with this and make himself look an even bigger plum than he has already? perhaps a little challenge from you, Mike, to him, is in order? it could prove interesting, although i seem to remember in the not too distant past he appeared in a talk show or something, trying then what he is trying now.
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- Anonymous Coward, 8 Sep 2014 @ 8:34am
  
  Re:
  do you think he will actually move forward with this and make himself look an even bigger plum than he has already?
  You never know - he might be one of those people who still believes "there's no such thing as bad publicity."
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - nasch (profile), 8 Sep 2014 @ 8:20pm
    
    Re: Re:
    You never know - he might be one of those people who still believes "there's no such thing as bad publicity."
    
    I'll bet GM would have some thoughts on that subject.
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Sep 2014 @ 6:25am

Clarification using his own words
I don't believe that a 14 year old dark-skinned immigrant boy named Shiva Ayyadurai invented email in 1978.
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MacCruiskeen, 8 Sep 2014 @ 6:27am

"Huffington Post journalists apparently didn't even think were worth the trouble of a quick Googling, to find where all of Ayyadurai's claims had long since been debunked. "

If HuffPo did that, they'd have to take down half the site. They let Joe Mercola have a whole channel to himself!
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Sep 2014 @ 6:38am

From his own "inventorofemail.com" site:
He determined that the essential features of these systems included functions corresponding to “Inbox”, “Outbox”, “Drafts”, “Memo” (“To:”, “From:”, “Date:”, “Subject:”, “Body:”, “Cc:”, “Bcc:”), “Attachments”, “Folders”, “Compose”, “Forward”, “Reply”, “Address Book”, “Groups”, “Return Receipt”, “Sorting”.

Ok, so he admits to creating the flawed "from:" feature of email that is not validated allowing spammers to hide their identities.

He admits to creating the feature that allows virus "attachments" in emails.

He admits to creating the flawed "address book" that is easily stolen by viruses instead of being protected.

Does this mean I can sue him for every piece of SPAM and virus I've ever received through email? He must be responsible for trillions in damages from his flawed "invention" of email.
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- Michael, 8 Sep 2014 @ 6:50am
  
  Re:
  Does this mean I can sue him for every piece of SPAM and virus I've ever received through email?
  
  This is the United States of America. You can sue anyone for anything you want - you just need to be prepared for the fact that you will not win.
  
  Apparently, he's going to be at the courthouse anyway, so have at it.
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  - John Fenderson (profile), 8 Sep 2014 @ 7:58am
    
    Re: Re:
    "you just need to be prepared for the fact that you will not win."
    
    Unless you have enough money to drag the process out so that your opponent is bankrupted before a ruling can be obtained. Then you effectively win.
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    - Anonymous Coward, 8 Sep 2014 @ 10:06am
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      If you bankrupt your opponent in a game of poker, that is part of the game. That the comparison can be made is unfortunately for a system pretending to hold everybody equal for the law, but it can be made.
      [ link to this | view in chronology ]
      - nasch (profile), 8 Sep 2014 @ 8:23pm
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re:
        If you bankrupt your opponent in a game of poker, that is part of the game. That the comparison can be made is unfortunately for a system pretending to hold everybody equal for the law, but it can be made.
        
        Also in both situations, you don't actually have to have the better hand to win.
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Geno0wl (profile), 8 Sep 2014 @ 6:59am

Ironically
There is a top feed on facebook today(if anybody still uses that here).

"Fran Drescher: 'The Nanny' lead Fran Drescher marries email patent holder Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai"

ugh. Wonder where that came from...
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- Michael, 8 Sep 2014 @ 7:03am
  
  Re: Ironically
  If we have to listen to HIS never-ending repeated claims about inventing email in HER voice, I am going to be rather unhappy.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 8 Sep 2014 @ 11:33am
    
    Re: Re: Ironically
    Well, at least when out-of-character her voice is tolerable.
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wshuff (profile), 8 Sep 2014 @ 7:06am

Yep, just signed in to post that the inventor of email married The Nanny.
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wshuff (profile), 8 Sep 2014 @ 7:06am

Yep, just signed in to post that the inventor of email married The Nanny.
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- Michael, 8 Sep 2014 @ 7:16am
  
  Re:
  Man with annoying fake story marries woman with annoying voice.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - JEDIDIAH, 8 Sep 2014 @ 9:24am
    
    Nyuk Nyuk
    It puts a new spin on "The Beautician and the Beast".
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
    - Michael, 8 Sep 2014 @ 9:45am
      
      Re: Nyuk Nyuk
      Too bad franchises are dead or you could try selling the screenplay.
      [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Whatever (profile), 8 Sep 2014 @ 7:06am

Journalism
I think that this may be the future of "journalism". Even Tech Crunch got caught recently posting up a bunch of posts by company owners about their products as "news". Sad really.
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- Chris Rhodes (profile), 8 Sep 2014 @ 7:41am
  
  Re: Journalism
  I'm not sure it also wasn't the past of journalism, except that now it's easier to debunk garbage like this and get the word out about it to others.
  
  I'd certainly rather us not go back to the days when a person's two sources for news were a talking head on the TV and some guy at the local newspaper. If this series had been written back then, who would have been there to correct them?
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - John Fenderson (profile), 8 Sep 2014 @ 8:02am
    
    Re: Re: Journalism
    "I'd certainly rather us not go back to the days when a person's two sources for news were a talking head on the TV and some guy at the local newspaper"
    
    Me either. I'd like to go back to the time before that. I took a passel of journalism courses in my young 'un days, and I was taught that the multiple sources meant multiple primary sources -- another journalist doesn't count as a source at all.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
    - Michael, 8 Sep 2014 @ 8:44am
      
      Re: Re: Re: Journalism
      Did you fill that in on a test with a quill pen by candlelight?
      
      It seems like it has been an awfully long time since journalism had any sort of integrity.
      
      I like the new checks-and-balances system we have now as well - people get called out on bulls*** right away these days.
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      - John Fenderson (profile), 8 Sep 2014 @ 9:02am
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Journalism
        Real, high quality journalism has always been a rare and precious thing. However, there was a day when people (especially people in the news biz) at least knew what it looked like. It used to be much more common than it is now -- we have very nearly no journalism at all in the mainstream anymore. I yearn for the days when you could still find it there, even if it was rare.
        
        "I like the new checks-and-balances system we have now as well - people get called out on bulls*** right away these days"
        
        Here's the thing: journalism in the US died before the internet started picking up the slack, so there was a number of years when it didn't exist at all. The checks-and-balances system is welcome in that it's a shift back toward some kind of reliability in reporting, but it still has a long way to go, and you still have to examine everything with an extremely critical eye. I don't think it's as effective as you portray quite yet. It's improving, so perhaps it will be, but in my opinion we haven't even reached the level of reliability we had back in the "golden days" of journalism (such as it was).
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        Michael, 8 Sep 2014 @ 9:11am
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Journalism
        I am not sure the level of reliability was ever that high. It feels like a "get off my lawn" conversation where journalism was better when we were kids.
        
        I agree that it felt like that, but the fact that as a child I remember everyone trusting that what the news reported was true because we thought they had integrity does not mean that they actually had integrity or could be trusted. I agree with Chris that there seems to be a pretty good chance that we just didn't know when they were full of crap and since news came from all of about 3 possible sources, there was nobody telling us different.
        [ link to this | view in chronology ]
        
        John Fenderson (profile), 8 Sep 2014 @ 9:25am
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Journalism
        "I am not sure the level of reliability was ever that high."
        
        I agree. I suppose I didn't stress that point enough -- the level of reliability was never very high. It's just that it's fallen so much lower now that in comparison it looks that way.
        
        This isn't just a subjective thing -- pretty much all analyses of factual claims made in reporting supports the notion that we are at a nadir right now.
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        PRMan, 8 Sep 2014 @ 12:27pm
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Journalism
        Most Americans didn't even know that FDR couldn't use his legs due to polio, and he was president.
        [ link to this | view in chronology ]
        
        John Fenderson (profile), 8 Sep 2014 @ 1:29pm
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Journalism
        Indeed. This sort of thing used to be the main way that news got slanted. As one of my journalism instructors once said in a course on detecting and countering bias, the most common form that bias takes is in the decision of what not to report.
        [ link to this | view in chronology ]
        
        Anonymous Coward, 8 Sep 2014 @ 9:26am
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Journalism
        We will likely never return to the "golden days" of journalism. The Vietnam War was lost precisely because the US news media was given too much free rein, a point not lost on military strategists, and to no one's surprise, every conflict since then has had a captive press.
        [ link to this | view in chronology ]
        
        John Fenderson (profile), 8 Sep 2014 @ 9:46am
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Journalism
        Yes, I agree, and it's yet another reason why a free (as in speech) internet is so critically important.
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        Michael, 8 Sep 2014 @ 9:48am
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Journalism
        every conflict since then has had a captive press
        
        and they have all been pillars of success. There was even a big "Mission Accomplished" banner for one of them...
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        AnonyBabs, 8 Sep 2014 @ 12:13pm
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Journalism
        "the US news media was given too much free rein"
        
        There is no such thing. See "Amendment, First."
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        PRMan, 8 Sep 2014 @ 12:28pm
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Journalism
        There is in the mind of a military strategist...
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        Anonymous Coward, 9 Sep 2014 @ 3:47am
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Journalism
        It didn't help that the senior officers ignored the Australian officers who had recently been in a very similar campaign and won (and the Australian government was even worse, because they removed the officers who were making intelligent suggestions and replacing them with those who agreed with the Americans).
        
        To make it worse, when the Australians did start applying the lessons they learnt in the Malayan Emergency, the American sector commanders who copied them were criticised for not killing enough Vietnamese.
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Sep 2014 @ 7:23am

Legal action
I believe I speak for most of the readers of this fine website when I say the following word:

*popcorn*
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- Michael, 8 Sep 2014 @ 8:45am
  
  Re: Legal action
  I thought piracy killed that industry and there were no more popcorn farmers now.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 8 Sep 2014 @ 7:46am

racism vs. facts -- rewriting history
Just a quick off-topic rant ... I've noticed that history is often re-written in the name of "combating racism" or whatever. Just to name one example, when I was in elementary and middle school, we were all taught that the first person to die in the "Boston Massacre" was Crispus Attucks, a 'Negro' protester. Years later I learned that the actual facts don't agree with that narrative. It seems that court documents from that time refer to Crispus Attucks as either "mulatto" or "Indian" - but never once as "African" or "black" or "negro" - the preferred label of that time. Also, as he was just one of several people who were shot in that incident and died where they fell, there was no evidence that his death somehow happened before the others. Also the fact that the soldiers' flintlock rifles of that era were as a rule fired simultaneously on command (lest the primer sparks from one rifle set off the gunpowder in another) would suggest that each victim was hit at essentially the exact same time.

But it seems facts mean little when it comes to writing children's history books. It took a century before the George Washington cherry tree fable was no longer presented as documented fact in history books, but it remains to be seen how long it takes before the equally-unlikely Crispus Attucks narrative starts to be addressed truthfully. And the Crispus Attucks story is just one of many examples.

As to Ayyadurai's claim of racism, I've noticed that "reverse racism" seems to be the general rule when (re)writing history in the modern era. By tossing out that he was a 'dark-skinned' kid in Newark, it looks like he was trying to ride that sympathy bandwagon by associating himself with an entirely different 'dark-skinned' race and ethnicity. (I wonder if he might also be exploiting the "minority-owned business" pool of perks, subsidies, and freebies that was never intended for people like him.)
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- sorrykb (profile), 8 Sep 2014 @ 8:33am
  
  Re: racism vs. facts -- rewriting history
  Go spin your racist drivel someplace else. I recommend trying your hand at book reviews for The Economist. You'll fit in nicely there and no one will challenge your worldview.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- JEDIDIAH, 8 Sep 2014 @ 9:31am
  
  Re: racism vs. facts -- rewriting history
  Yeah. Can't see why a black man in the US colonies might want to downplay the fact that he has enough negro blood to be considered property in the southern colonies.
  
  Although if you are going to split hairs about terminology you should at least bother to learn what the terms in question actually mean.
  
  Our president is a Mulatto.
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- PRMan, 8 Sep 2014 @ 12:32pm
  
  Re: racism vs. facts -- rewriting history
  For more reading, you might try the unabridged log of Christopher Columbus. There you will find a story which barely matches the reverse-racism driven one in your children's history books.
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Andrew Norton (profile), 8 Sep 2014 @ 8:36am

Just noticed at the bottom of his wikipedia page this little tidbid.

In September of 2014, Ayyadurai married American actress Fran Drescher. The two had met the year before at an event hosted by Deepak Chopra

Maybe it was her publicist, or his trying to make him sound big and get more wedding coverage. Even ET wrote he had a patent for email. Wonder if he lied to her too....
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DoloresCruz1982, 8 Sep 2014 @ 8:58am

What is Dr. Nightingale's role?
How did he snooker Dr. Deborah Nightingale? A real MIT person? http://www.integrativesystems.org/research/Genius-of-Ayurveda-and-Siddha-Validated-By-Systems-Scienc e.asp
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- JEDIDIAH, 8 Sep 2014 @ 9:33am
  
  Re: What is Dr. Nightingale's role?
  Perhaps she's from the linguistics department or some other part of the university besides the Computer Science department.
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Annonimus, 8 Sep 2014 @ 9:14am

We still have screencaps yes?
Please tell me someone archived this mess while it was happening and that we can bring up these lying articles the next time this idiot (or the Huffington Post) decide to blunder over the internet again.

And since you are asking questions already could you ask this one: Are they going to keep their journalistic and blogging articles separate or is another debacle like this one to be expected in the future?
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- Michael, 8 Sep 2014 @ 9:21am
  
  Re: We still have screencaps yes?
  is another debacle like this one to be expected in the future?
  
  I'm sure there is one happening now.
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- AZModDem (profile), 9 Sep 2014 @ 7:45am
  
  Re: We still have screencaps yes?
  As soon as the removal notice appeared, I grabbed them all from Wayback and Google Cache.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Thomas Haigh, 8 Sep 2014 @ 9:56am

Is Ayyadyrai's Plan Working?
News of Ayyadurai’s wedding seem to clear up the “why now” question raised by some commentators on earlier posts. Ayyadurai apparently wanted the Huffington Post and other recent stories to amplify his claims before the inevitable surge in press coverage he could count on as a participant in a celebrity wedding.

Despite the Huffington Post retractions (made on his wedding day) this strategy seems to be working. The same pattern is taking place as with the 2012 wave of stories. Enough inaccurate material stays online to help dupe the next wave of bottom-feeding bloggers. For example, Time never retracted its credulous online interview with Ayyadurai from 2011 and, as Mike pointed out above, the Huffington Post still has the Chopra blog post from 2013. Those both slipped under the radar when they appeared, as did a concerted effort to write Ayyadurai into various obscure Wikipedia pages. It’s only when Ayyadurai gets high profile coverage (the 2012 print article in the Washington Post, the recent epic Huffington Post series) that anyone bothers to push back.

Celebrity gossip bloggers are doing an even worse job than personal technology bloggers of evaluating his claims. Here are a few from today’s coverage:
Mail Online: “The pair met early last year when Dr. Ayyadurai - who owns the patent to email and is often credited as the inventor of the electronic mail system amid some controversy - was giving a talk at an event hosted by Deepak Chopra.”
CBS News: “Ayyadurai, who holds the patent for inventing email, met Drescher a year ago at an event hosted by Deepak Chopra.”
ABC News: "Drescher married the scientist, who is widely credited with having invented email -- at their home… Ayyadurai currently teaches at MIT and was profiled in 2011 in Time magazine for being the first person to hold a copyright for ‘EMAIL’”
People Magazine: “Ayyadurai, 50, who holds the patent for creating email, met Drescher, 56, a little over a year ago when he gave a talk at an event hosted by Deepak Chopra, according to an interview he did with the Huffington Post.” The HP news article it links to is still up, and claims that “In August 1982, the U.S. government accepted a patent for an electronic intra-office messaging system called "email" from then-teenager V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai.”

It is almost as if the whole thing is a post-modern performance art stunt designed to highlight the failings of online media. A few minutes with Google would reveal that he does not currently teach at MIT, that he was not granted a patent on email in 1982, and that he is credited as inventor of email primarily by his friends, family members, and business partners. I have updated my online evaluation of Ayyadurai’s claims with a one paragraph summary at the beginning, but do not expect it to make much difference.
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- nasch (profile), 8 Sep 2014 @ 8:28pm
  
  Re: Is Ayyadyrai's Plan Working?
  Here are a few from today’s coverage:
  
  Holy crap, none of them even know the difference between patent and copyright...
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  - That One Guy (profile), 8 Sep 2014 @ 8:37pm
    
    Re: Re: Is Ayyadyrai's Plan Working?
    That would take work, much easier to just take the liar at his word and repeat his claims without question. /s
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    - nasch (profile), 8 Sep 2014 @ 9:01pm
      
      Re: Re: Re: Is Ayyadyrai's Plan Working?
      That would take work, much easier to just take the liar at his word and repeat his claims without question. /s
      
      Kind of depressing when the complete lack of interest in any investigation of claims is so in your face.
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Rich Kulawiec, 8 Sep 2014 @ 10:16am

Where's the source code?
He claims to have written an email system in 1978. If that's true, it's an impressive achievement, particularly for someone so young. Surely anyone so accomplished would have preserved the source code along with documentation (e.g. screen shots, demonstrations, etc.).

So where is it? I (and others) can lay our hands on source code from that time period: heck, I have copies of far more trivial, far less important pieces of my own work from v6 days, including the manual pages. So he must have a copy of this of email system somewhere, and of course, he should be willing to back up his claims by publishing the entire corpus for public scrutiny.
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- John Fenderson (profile), 8 Sep 2014 @ 10:40am
  
  Re: Where's the source code?
  "Surely anyone so accomplished would have preserved the source code along with documentation (e.g. screen shots, demonstrations, etc.)."
  
  The documentation and source were both registered with the copyright office, so copies (masked, in the case of the source) are in the possession of the copyright office. There is little reasonable doubt that he wrote the system he claims he wrote.
  
  As an aside, when I was 15, I wrote and deployed a class registration and grade recording system for my high school. This was a project about as large as implementing a full email system. However, I lost the source code to this many, many years ago. It happens.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 9 Sep 2014 @ 5:41am
    
    Re: Re: Where's the source code?
    I don't buy that argument. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and in this case, the only acceptable proof is the complete source code.
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    - nasch (profile), 9 Sep 2014 @ 7:27am
      
      Re: Re: Re: Where's the source code?
      Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof
      
      Why do you think the claim is so extraordinary?
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    - John Fenderson (profile), 9 Sep 2014 @ 8:19am
      
      Re: Re: Re: Where's the source code?
      I agree with masch. It's not an extraordinary claim. It's also a claim that literally nobody who has even the remotest connection to the guy doubts or disputes.
      
      In my view, given the ample evidence (both in documentation and in eyewitnesses), the extraordinary claim is that he didn't write it.
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      - Thomas Haigh (profile), 9 Sep 2014 @ 9:11am
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Where's the source code?
        Everybody who has looked into this recognizes that Ayyadurai created an electronic mail system. Although not in 1978 -- his own timeline infographic used to say that the "first version of the system was designed and deployed" in 1980. He since changed his story since to 1978. He has screenshots of source code dated 1982 and a newspaper report (that just calls the program electronic mail, not "email") from 1980. No reason to think those things are faked. So yes, he wrote a program in 1980 when he was 16. He gave a box of stuff to the Smithsonian and says that the source code is in it. I have no reason to doubt that.
        
        The problem is that to be the inventor of email you don't just have to make an electronic mail system. You have to make the first electronic mail system. So he would have to prove that none of the dozens, probably hundreds, of electronic mail systems documented between 1965 and 1980 deserve to be called "email."
        
        I go through this is great detail at http://www.sigcis.org/ayyadurai. But that's the bottom line: you can't invent something that is already invented.
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        John Fenderson (profile), 9 Sep 2014 @ 10:28am
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Where's the source code?
        Exactly so.
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Gwiz (profile), 8 Sep 2014 @ 10:17am

There's a blog post from 2013 by Deepak Chopra and Ayyadurai making the same claims that remains on the site.

I guess HuffPo removed that one now too. All I get is a 404 error.
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- Michael, 8 Sep 2014 @ 10:42am
  
  Re:
  I invented the 404 error.
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- Hai, 8 Sep 2014 @ 5:56pm
  
  Re:
  This one's still there: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/08/email-inventor_n_5568511.html
  
  and this one: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/one-world-with-deepak-chopra/the-boy-who-invented-emai_b_5021127.html
  
  H uffPo got really infested; guess it's easy when nobody over there seems to care about the truth.
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AnonCow, 8 Sep 2014 @ 10:30am

At a Deepak Chopra event, there are two types of people: the scammers and those to be scammed.
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Kronomex, 8 Sep 2014 @ 3:33pm

"...man in the middle of a raging controversy over his claims of being the inventor of email, doesn't want to go legal on his detractors but is looking for support from the public. "Lawsuits take a long time. If I have to pull the trigger I will...." Means he'll make a lot of noise and threats but won't go any further because he knows he'll get his arse handed to him on a plate.
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nasch (profile), 8 Sep 2014 @ 8:30pm

Have to?
"Lawsuits take a long time. If I have to pull the trigger I will.

Where do people even get the idea that they have to sue in situations like this? There could be times when you have little choice but to sue, but this doesn't even resemble one.
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MrTroy (profile), 8 Sep 2014 @ 11:45pm

Of course the reality is that it has nothing to do with racism, but rather the facts

Ok Mike, you might not be a racist, but you finally admit to being a facist!

Oh, what was that? Factist?

Never mind.
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Anonymous, 20 Dec 2014 @ 11:51pm

Ayyadurai is a FRAUD!
People, please! This Indian guy didn't invent email. The US government did when ARPANET was invented. And even then, its former developments used the technology. This was around the 70s (I think?)

India is full of liars & con artists like this scumbag
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JB, 12 Jan 2017 @ 5:21pm

You may be wrong about this
I just went to Shiva Ayyadurai's website and it makes some very good points.

If he did design a system with all the features he described in 1978 and copyrighted it as EMAIL, then he can credibly say that he invented email. The point he makes is that his feature set was complete and working and it was the first system that truly resembles modern day email.

His arguments that earlier systems were text messaging systems that did not resemble modern email also needs be closely looked at but from what I see he may be right here.

It makes no difference if email evolved from his system or from a different lineage. If he rolled out modern email first, then he invented email.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Jul 2019 @ 2:22am

Once again, from the year 2019:

Shiva Ayyadurai DIDN'T INVENT EMAIL!
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