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from the the-first-amendment-means-something dept.
Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
As you likely know, for most of the past nine months, we've been dealing with a defamation lawsuit from Shiva Ayyadurai, who claims to have invented email. This is a claim that we have disputed at great length and in great detail, showing how email existed long before Ayyadurai wrote his program. We pointed to the well documented public history of email, and how basically all of the components that Ayyadurai now claims credit for preceded his own work. We discussed how his arguments were, at best, misleading, such as arguing that the copyright on his program proved that he was the "inventor of email" -- since patents and copyrights are very different, and just because Microsoft has a copyright on "Windows" it does not mean it "invented" the concept of a windowed graphical user interface (because it did not). As I have said, a case like this is extremely draining -- especially on an emotional level -- and can create massive chilling effects on free speech.
A few hours ago, the judge ruled and we prevailed. The case has been dismissed and the judge rejected Ayyadurai's request to file an amended complaint. We are certainly pleased with the decision and his analysis, which notes over and over again that everything that we stated was clearly protected speech, and the defamation (and other claims) had no merit. This is, clearly, a big win for the First Amendment and free speech -- especially the right to call out and criticize a public figure such as Shiva Ayyadurai, who is now running for the US Senate in Massachusetts. We're further happy to see the judge affirm that CDA Section 230 protects us from being sued over comments made on the blog, which cannot be attributed to us under the law. We talk a lot about the importance of CDA 230, in part because it protects sites like our own from these kinds of lawsuits. This is just one more reason we're so concerned about the latest attempt in Congress to undermine CDA 230. While those supporting the bill may claim that it only targets sites like Backpage, such changes to CDA 230 could have a much bigger impact on smaller sites like our own.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday September 07 2017, @08:57PM
And I'm only being partly facetious. Of course I'm not going try and make everyone believe me or sue anyone that contradicts me, but I may well have 'invented the FPS;' in whatever sense anyone might really be said to have invented a whole genre of games. I wrote a game in early 1981 that was basically a FPS. Of course it was primitive and limited and really a proof of concept that I abandoned. I'm not even sure if there's a readable backup tape to prove the story, but that's not the point.
Even if it's true, even if I had the backup to prove it, and even if no one else made anything similar before (and I'm not sure on that and haven't really checked because it doesn't matter) - none of that actually gives me any legitimate claim to a dime of IDs money, or anyone elses.
Writing the first program of a genre, however defined, does not give you some sort of 'intellectual property' rights over the genre going forward. It just doesn't work that way.
Probably a better programmer than I wrote a much better proof of concept with the same features I used well before 1981 - that's just a guess but it's a reasonable one. In the case of email, of course, we have numerous examples to prove the point, precisely because this guy has actually caused people enough trouble with his claims that they've gone to the trouble of debunking and documenting them.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?