OLD Media Moves

Judge dismisses libel lawsuit against Techdirt

September 6, 2017

Posted by Chris Roush

TechdirtA judge has dismissed a libel lawsuit against tech news site Techdirt, which had been sued by a man claiming he invented email.

Cyrus Farivar of Ars Technica writes, “The claim was brought by Shiva Ayyadurai, who has controversially claimed that he invented e-mail in the late 1970s. Techdirt (and its founder and CEO, Mike Masnick) has been a longtime critic of Ayyadurai and institutions that have bought into his claims. ‘How The Guy Who Didn’t Invent Email Got Memorialized In The Press & The Smithsonian As The Inventor Of Email,’ reads one Techdirt headline from 2012.

“Numerous articles that dubbed Ayyadurai a ‘liar’ and a ‘charlatan’ followed. That, in turn, led to Ayyadurai’s January 2017 libel lawsuit.

“In the Wednesday ruling, US District Judge F. Dennis Saylor found that because it is impossible to define precisely and specifically what e-mail is, Ayyadurai’s ‘claim is incapable of being proved true or false.'”

Read more here.

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