V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai, Inventor Of Email, Fires Back At Critics Who Question His Discovery:

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...or-email.shtml

Lots of air on both sides - but seems like in a search Ayyadurai gets the credit most of the time.

That's what happens when you are a small guy going up against a big
company. This reminds of the story of the inventor of the
intermittent windshield wiper, Robert William Kearns. He had
to fight the big motor companies just for acknowledgment that
they stole his idea. If you've seen the movie Flash of Genius, you'll
know his story.

-Ray Edwards

It is a LIE! First of all, Email is "discovered" by people EVERY DAY! HECK, I discovered it around 1980, though I wasn't able to really use it untilmuch later. I ASSUME he is trying to say he CREATED it! Not allof this is done by the government. HECK, it started at AT&T!!!!! And the IEEE built on it. And this is NOT the american dream. The american dream is supposed to be about becoming a general successand having a nice life. And there are PLENTY of people that built onto those specs that weren't american. Look at Linus Torvalds. He did a LOT to build the computer industry. Probably more than Bill Gates ever did. HE'S FINNISH!

in 1978 VERY few people in the US, and likely the world, had access to this kind of thing, especially to peopla 14yo. It was NOTHING like now!

TODAY, at least in the US, you can buy standard computers. In 1978 only some SELECT HOBBYIST systems!

TODAY, ALL major OS and computers natively support networking. In 1978 only ONE, that I know of natively support it, and it was a VERY expensive O/S called UNIX. TODAY you can get unix for free, but it was FAR from free then.

TODAY, ALL versions of M/S windows support networking. In 1978, windows was still 6years off, and it did NOT support networking.

TODAY, networking, and all associated with it is CHEAP and freely available. In 1978 it was expensive, custom, and not so available.

BTW What about this blurb I found in an email spec?

They had an RFC for standards here? That was in 1973! So they had stuff working, etc... It ALSO says" By 1977, the Arpanet employed several informal standards for the text messages (mail) sent among its host computers." RFC 822: Standard for the Format of Arpa Internet Text Messages

MAN, the guy is "dark skinned", And he wants to say people don't credit him because he is not white!

You COULD patent methods. A copyright did, and still, only protects EXPRESSION! And I could write an email process *****TODAY***** that works just like the current one, and get a valid COPYRIGHT. I have written LOTS of documents about things I didn't create, and could copyright every one of them. That doesn't mean I made the product they are about.

Conversely, the best protection against copyright infringement has ALWAYS been to NOT RELEASE IT! So you may never find the source code, for a particular OS or program in the library of congress either.

Steve

You really have to wonder about these guys. I EVEN tried looking for a message about email that had parts that ********HAD********* to be in such a program! I found MILLIONS!

I narrowed that down to ones that had Ayyadurai in it, and I didn't find ONE! SO, about this copyright, WHERE is it? I want to see the actual DOCUMENT! I BET it is some client or even a WRAPPER! Of course, clients DON'T work without servers, and wrappers do even less. All this talk about a copyright, where is it? I don't even think I saw a number.

He also seemed to try an old trick at CSIR. According to Prashant Reddy:

I read the article, and actually wondered when I would see this, and I DID!

I hate to say it, but the assertion could have been made almost anywhere. I, and many, made it about the noble prize. Read their site, it is GEARED to that. But you also don't attack people directly like that. SOME try such things to say just what he said, in hopes that they will be able to say still MORE, or sue.

ANOTHER thing! Copyrights are not really any good if released work predates them. So THAT is kind of a giveaway ALSO. Copyrights aren't like patents. PATENTS are supposed to be checked in various ways. Copyrights are basically entered into the record and just STAMPED. You CAN copyright a telephone book! People even HAVE! People have even SUED! SOME even WON! HOW? Well, you CAN'T copyright the data. It is someone elses. But you CAN copyright the format and, if it is unusual, the order. ADOBE made a FORTUNE by copyrighting the alphabet! SERIOUSLY! They used to be primarily a type foundry, and created different fonts that they copyrighted. You CAN'T copyright the idea of the alphabet, but you CAN copyright the appearance.

Steve