[IP] Re V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai, Inventor Of Email, Fires Back At Critics Who Question His Discovery

[Dave Farber via ip]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: *Whitfield Diffie* <***@gmail.com>
Date: Tuesday, September 2, 2014
Subject: [IP] V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai, Inventor Of Email, Fires Back At
Critics Who Question His Discovery

to denote the address a message was being sent to was added in 1972 by
Ray Tomlinson, it beats me how anyone can claim to have "invented" email
in 1978.

The best I can find on what VA Shiva Ayyadurai did is paragraph in
his Wikipedia entry:

A November 2011 Time Techland interview by Doug Aamoth entitled "The
Man Who Invented Email" argued that Ayyadurai's program represented
the birth of email "as we currently know it". In that interview,
Ayyadurai recalled that Les Michelson, the former particle scientist
at Brookhaven National Labs who assigned Ayyadurai the project, had
the idea of creating an electronic mail system that uses the header
conventions of a hardcopy memorandum. Ayyadurai recalled Michelson as
saying: ``Your job is to convert that into an electronic format.
Nobody's done that before.''[7]

from which I conclude that the claimed invention is the header format.

A quick look at my files finds messages from from 1976 that use that
format:

29-SEP-76 1935 FTP:CERF at USC-ISI Data Communication Conference/ Sept 1977
Date: 29 SEP 1976 1802-PDT
From: CERF at USC-ISI
Subject: Data Communication Conference/ Sept 1977
To: walker
cc: cerf, wd at SU-AI

22-AUG-76 0857 FTP:LEFAIVRE at RUTGERS-10 MORE ON THE LISP COMPILER
Date: 22 Aug 1976 (Sunday) 1155-Est
From: LEFAIVRE at RUTGERS-10
Subject: MORE ON THE LISP COMPILER
To: DIFFIE at SU-AI

so I don't see how this can be novel in 1978.


Whit



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[Dave Farber via ip]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: *Daniel Weitzner* <***@csail.mit.edu>
Date: Tuesday, September 2, 2014
Subject: Re V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai, Inventor Of Email, Fires Back At Critics
Who Question His Discovery
To: David Farber <***@farber.net>
Cc: ip <***@listbox.com>


The continuation of Ian Peter’s page has a nice observation to Whit’s
point:

"As Ray Tomlinson observed some years later about email, "any single
development is stepping on the heels of the previous one and is so closely
followed by the next that most advances are obscured. I think that few
individuals will be remembered." That's true - to catalogue all the
developments would be a huge task.”[7]

The fundamental mis-match between the patent system as we know it and
Internet-era innovation is that the real value of things on the Internet
(email, the Web, etc.) seem to be derived from combinations of incremental
advances made up of otherwise obvious ‘inventions'. Doing those things in
the right order and getting lots of people to use them created
technological and social revolution that is hard to value. Pulling
individual pieces apart and trying to claim credit (or worse, the right to
a license fee) completely misses the point.

[7] http://www.nethistory.info/History%20of%20the%20Internet/email.html

On Sep 1, 2014, at 8:01 PM, Dave Farber via ip <***@listbox.com
<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','***@listbox.com');>> wrote:



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: *Whitfield Diffie* <***@gmail.com
<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','***@gmail.com');>>
Date: Tuesday, September 2, 2014
Subject: [IP] V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai, Inventor Of Email, Fires Back At
Critics Who Question His Discovery

to denote the address a message was being sent to was added in 1972 by
Ray Tomlinson, it beats me how anyone can claim to have "invented" email
in 1978.

The best I can find on what VA Shiva Ayyadurai did is paragraph in
his Wikipedia entry:

A November 2011 Time Techland interview by Doug Aamoth entitled "The
Man Who Invented Email" argued that Ayyadurai's program represented
the birth of email "as we currently know it". In that interview,
Ayyadurai recalled that Les Michelson, the former particle scientist
at Brookhaven National Labs who assigned Ayyadurai the project, had
the idea of creating an electronic mail system that uses the header
conventions of a hardcopy memorandum. Ayyadurai recalled Michelson as
saying: ``Your job is to convert that into an electronic format.
Nobody's done that before.''[7]

from which I conclude that the claimed invention is the header format.

A quick look at my files finds messages from from 1976 that use that
format:

29-SEP-76 1935 FTP:CERF at USC-ISI Data Communication Conference/ Sept 1977
Date: 29 SEP 1976 1802-PDT
From: CERF at USC-ISI
Subject: Data Communication Conference/ Sept 1977
To: walker
cc: cerf, wd at SU-AI

22-AUG-76 0857 FTP:LEFAIVRE at RUTGERS-10 MORE ON THE LISP COMPILER
Date: 22 Aug 1976 (Sunday) 1155-Est
From: LEFAIVRE at RUTGERS-10
Subject: MORE ON THE LISP COMPILER
To: DIFFIE at SU-AI

so I don't see how this can be novel in 1978.


Whit

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[Dave Farber via ip]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Rich Kulawiec" <***@gsp.org>
Date: Sep 3, 2014 4:47 PM
Subject: Re: [IP] V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai, Inventor Of Email, Fires Back At
Critics Who Question His Discovery
To: <***@farber.net>
Cc:


(For IP, if you wish.)

Techdirt has dissected this at length:

Why Is Huffington Post Running A Multi-Part Series To Promote The
Lies Of A Guy Who Pretended To Invent Email?

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140901/07280928386/huffpo-publishes-bizarre-misleading-factually-incorrect-multi-part-series-pretending-guy-invented-email-even-though-he-didnt.shtml

---rsk



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[Dave Farber via ip]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: *Dave Crocker* <***@bbiw.net>
Date: Wednesday, September 3, 2014
Subject: Re V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai, Inventor Of Email, Fires Back At Critics
Who Question His Discovery

Post by Dave Farber via ip
Why Is Huffington Post Running A Multi-Part Series To Promote
The Lies Of A Guy Who Pretended To Invent Email?

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140901/07280928386/huffpo-publishes-bizarre-misleading-factually-incorrect-multi-part-series-pretending-guy-invented-email-even-though-he-didnt.shtml


Very nice job.

His article prompted me to finally remember that my Rand report -- for a
system that Dave Farber consulted on -- was not the only reference to
the 'memo' model for email that was used on the Arpanet (and continues
to be used on the Internet.)

The 1977 RFC 733, which finally resolved various existing behaviors for
Arpanet mail and even used the word 'standard' in the title, also cites it:

'A general "memo" framework is used...and is primarily useful
for most intra-organization communications and relatively structured
inter-organization communication.'


d/
--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net



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[Dave Farber via ip]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Dave Crocker" <***@bbiw.net>
Date: Sep 6, 2014 11:16 PM
Subject: HP articles removed (was Re: [IP] Re V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai,
Inventor Of Email, Fires Back At Critics Who Question His Discovery)
To: <***@farber.net>, "ip" <***@listbox.com>
Cc: "Rich Kulawiec" <***@gsp.org>, "Peter H Salus" <***@pedant.com>

Techdirt has continued to provide excellent, additional articles --
classic, professional reporting that does real and meaningful research
and finds... facts -- debunking Shiva's claims. Separate from the topic
itself, the articles make for interesting reading; crisp and direct and
thorough.

And to cap this sequence, Huffington Post has just removed the series of
interconnected press release "articles". In their place is the
following statement by HP:

" Editor's Note

" 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."


I find myself oddly sorry that the articles have been completely
removed, because the body of comments that were posted in response to
each one created a very nice trove of refutation about this continuing,
bizarre effort at deception.

d/

--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net



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