Techdirt has prevailed over Shiva Ayyadurai: the “inventor of e-mail” had sued the media company for $15 million after they published an article stating that he was full of it, but the case is now no more. In a big win for free speech, Judge F. Dennis Saylor ruled that the articles were protected under the First Amendment, partly because they “are not provably false, are subjective statements that do not imply knowledge of objective facts, or are statements involving figurative language or hyperbole.”



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.

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Source: [H]ardOCP – Self-Proclaimed “Inventor of Email” Has Libel Case Dismissed in US Courts