[ih] Defamation lawsuit brought by self-proclaimed email "inventor" settles

[John Levine]

In article <1b7efa01-9b5a-ba29-1f06-adbaa75ee890 at lisse.NA> you write:
>What is the actual difference (in the legal sense) between Ayyadurai
>claiming free speech and Techdirt claiming free speech?

Ayyarudai was claiming defamation, not free speech.  Nobody ever
asserted that he can't say whatever nonsense he wants.

I'd say this is a mild loss for Masnick.  Having read all of the
material in dispute, and being familiar with the facts, I found that
Masnick's articles were all true.  Ayyadurai has been extremely
disingenuous, notably when he filed for copyright on his mail program
and then said that meant that the government had accepted his claim to
be the inventor of e-mail, while at most it meant that they'd accepted
his claim to have written one particular mail program in the 1970s.

Masnick could probably have won his suit, but in the absence of the
California SLAPP law (Ayyadurai is in Masachusetss) it's unlikely he
could have gotten his legal costs so he was better off settling.  All
he agreed to do was to add some more links to Ayyadurai's web site.

Ayyadurai's claims to have invented e-mail in 1978 were and are
absurd.  Many people on this list were using e-mail years earlier.