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John Carmack on expert witnesses and 'non literal' copying

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Re: John Carmack on expert witnesses and 'non literal' copying

#141

Post by DannyBee »

"There are objective measures of code similarity that can be quoted, like the edit distance between abstract syntax trees, but here the expert hand identified the abstract steps that the code fragments were performing, made slides that nobody in the courtroom could actually read, filled with colored boxes outlining the purportedly analogous code in each case. In some cases, the abstractions he came up with were longer than the actual code they were supposed to be abstracting."

This is because of the abstraction filtration comparison test that courts use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction-Filtration-Compari...

I think it's garbage too, but such is life.

I don't think you can blame the expert for producing something that goes along with what the current law is.

Re: John Carmack on expert witnesses and 'non literal' copying

#142

Post by xamuel »

ISL wrote: post #60
ue_ wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very common argument against juries, and I think it's one of the most powerful. Of course if you start to fill a jury with people competent in the area being judged, you run different risks, such as bias within the field. And it's still not clear that it would help with delivering justice. But if we take the idea of a jury to be about judging by one's peers, it should be patently clear (heh) that the jury o…

I once espoused a similar opinion, but have since changed my mind. I'm a physicist, and once expressed to a judge I had met on the trail that I wished I could be judged by my academic peers. It was my belief that they would be more receptive to logical argument, understanding in their analysis, and more committed to fundamental principles. The judge was visibly surprised, but said little. What later changed my mind w…

>The judge was visibly surprised

I would be too. What you said is rather arrogant. If you had based it on their having specific physics knowledge, that would be one thing. But to say that logic and reasoning is the exclusive realm of academia---that's very insulting to a lot of people.

Re: John Carmack on expert witnesses and 'non literal' copying

#143

Post by DannyBee »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #18

Interesting rant on expert witnesses. Mostly interesting because I've done some expert witness testimony and found it fascinating. I completely resonate with John's issue with the expert's testimony and his understanding of it. John mentioned that their own expert testified differently but he didn't say whether or not their lawyers attempted to impeach their expert with cross examination. In the two cases I participa…

To the last point, courts do actually try to solve this. The goal of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction-Filtration-Compari... that gets used is, in fact, to abstract things, eliminate the non-copyrightable parts, and try to see if any important stuff is left.

Wikipedia actually has a fairly good explanation of it in practice.

So they are actually trying, and the real problem is that existing copyright law, for literary works, is just not a match for how software tends to actually be developed, which is that "most code is worthless, there is very little that really should be protected".

(and before people argue that it could be millions of lines, the US, thankfully, refuses to have a sweat of the brow doctrine)

Re: John Carmack on expert witnesses and 'non literal' copying

#144

Post by pyb »

794CD01 wrote: post #134
jly wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cleary with a lot of money on the line from one side or the other, either side can likely find a 'expert witness' who is credentialed and willing to say what they want. At least that's true in a lot of cases. Regardless of how this handled in court, it's an issue. How is a jury built of non-experts to handle such a situation? In this case they clearly believed one side's testimony over the other, against what one cou…

It's not the jury's job to discredit a bad expert witness, the opposing side should be doing that in cross examination.

There is also the possibility to challenge the choice of expert witness before the trial, I believe.

Re: John Carmack on expert witnesses and 'non literal' copying

#145

Post by fjdlwlv »

RobertoG wrote: post #59
Filligree wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Why is there an assumption that you can explain anything to anyone? There is no law of nature stating that the maximum complexity anyone can invent is smaller than the complexity the average person can understand.

My personal impression is that when people of average intelligence can't understand something is because the concepts that make that thing are outside their expertise, not because they are not able to. They are missing the parts, so, understanding the total is impossible. People of exceptional intelligence is able to learn new things and think through a problems easily, but what makes a real difference is if you alre…

You think the average person could meaningfully review graphics rendering code?

Re: John Carmack on expert witnesses and 'non literal' copying

#146

Post by fulafel »

madgar wrote: post #36
ChuckMcM wrote: post #18

Interesting rant on expert witnesses. Mostly interesting because I've done some expert witness testimony and found it fascinating. I completely resonate with John's issue with the expert's testimony and his understanding of it. John mentioned that their own expert testified differently but he didn't say whether or not their lawyers attempted to impeach their expert with cross examination. In the two cases I participa…

> In the limit it means "you read this code, understood how it worked, and wrote new code that could do the same function." You can stretch that to cover anything you have ever seen. Which is sad. I thought the industry adopted "clean room" techniques decades ago to avoid this kind of appearance of impropriety. It's more expensive, sure, but isn't eliminating legal risk something that typically gets paid for?

"Clean room" is a name for one extreme of the spectrum, where you go for overkill in demonstrating and documenting there's no possible way there could have been copying. The law says you don't need to go so far, but people try to mitigate the low burden of proof in US court civil cases.

Re: John Carmack on expert witnesses and 'non literal' copying

#147

Post by madgar »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #102
madgar wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the limit it means "you read this code, understood how it worked, and wrote new code that could do the same function." You can stretch that to cover anything you have ever seen. Which is sad. I thought the industry adopted "clean room" techniques decades ago to avoid this kind of appearance of impropriety. It's more expensive, sure, but isn't eliminating legal risk something that typically gets paid for?

In this case, and others like it, a clean room is challenging because a principal (in this case Carmack) left one company and joined another. So the 'taint' if you will is in his head.

If so, then I see two possibilities here:

1) The IP in question was only reimplementable with Carmack involved, and the lawsuit was basically inevitable. Hiring Carmack in this scenario is reasonably perceived as an end-run around buying/licensing the IP itself.

2) The IP could be reproduced clean room without Carmack involved. Lawsuit is easily headed off.

Re: John Carmack on expert witnesses and 'non literal' copying

#148

Post by georgestephanis »

Cyph0n wrote: post #103
foldr wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wished I could be judged by my academic peers. It was my belief that they would be more receptive to logical argument, understanding in their analysis, and more committed to fundamental principles. Have you met any academics?

Exactly this. You would be surprised how petty and subjective academics are in practice. There is a reason why everything is done through committees in academia.

To be fair, a jury is a committee.

Re: John Carmack on expert witnesses and 'non literal' copying

#149

Post by Retric »

sqeaky wrote: post #136
Retric wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The simple approach would be to take pictures of several houses that look very similar and show they are not copies of each other. Have an architect show why some elements where similar between houses because of similar choices and constraints. Then show how what the two programs do are similar in they both sit between a game and computer hardware. Further, demonstrating they both share similarities with some other p…

Sticking with my examples of people who fundamentally cannot understand files, how do you explain the core differences of two file managers? I presume the VR software is an order of magnitude more complex than files and file managers.

They don't need to understand files, just the connection with [code] > computers running a program vs. [architectural drawings] > people making a house.

Architects don't build houses they design them in the same way computer architects don't build programs they design them. The analogy is a little fiddly as programmers > compilers also works like Architects > construction workers. But the line of thinking is not that hard to follow.

Re: John Carmack on expert witnesses and 'non literal' copying

#150

Post by fjdlwlv »

sqeaky wrote: post #114
toufka wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's precisely why the experts are asked their opinion. And a jury takes that opinion into account. "Dr. Soandso, do you believe, based on your experience, that such an action would constitute a flagrant abuse? Of a kind that is unprecedented? And such an action would damage the reputation of many, you say? And were such an action to take place it would cause harm to the industry for decades?" The jury needn't be a…

But then aren't you just expecting the Jury to trust the expert? How does the Jury tell two experts apart, while one says Yes and the other No?

Which one has a nicer looking face is more honest.
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