John Carmack on expert witnesses and 'non literal' copying • Hacker News Board

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

#221

Post by pmoriarty » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 8:17 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #118

rayiner wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would a jury of technically-minded people have helped here? Put aside the natural bias that software developers would have to be skeptical of any claims against a company with which John Carmack is involved. Now, you're trying to sell the story that Code B is a copy of Code A, even though they don't look the same , because of fancy math. Is that harder to sell to a jury of software developers than a jury of ordinary…

I feel if the devs were worth any salt, they'd clearly smell the bullshit. Just because you can do fancy math and turn one thing into another, doesn't mean it's what actually happened. Experienced developers should also easily recognize that two independently developed codebases may end up pretty similar at places simply because of the problem domain. There's for instance only so many ways you can structure the rende…

Then there's the (controversial) option of jury nullification.[1]

A juror may vote not guilty even if they believe the defendant broke the law. They could do this, for example, if they believe the law itself is not just or not legitimate, as could be the case if they thought that software patents or copyrights were illegitimate.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification

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

#222

Post by rockdoe » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 8:18 PM UTC

Ygg2 wrote: post #191

jonknee wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Carmack intentionally destroyed data on his computer after he got notice of this litigation and right after he researched on Google how to wipe a hard drive Somehow I think John knows how to wipe a drive...

Every dev knows how to wipe a drive. Buy an identical drive. Throw old drive into the incinerator.

I didn't know this but I do now.

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

#223

Post by pedasmith » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 8:25 PM UTC

toufka wrote: post #69

nitwit005 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much time does it take to understand something with sufficient depth to make a sound judgement? It would be nice if the answer could somehow always be a short expert witness testimony, but the reality seems to be that in some areas it's months or years of study. In your example, you'd have to explain what source code is, what a graphics library is, methods of representing and comparing source code, and how the ap…

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…

Not how it works; that's leading the witness, and just because you are an expert in one field (comparing code) doesn't mean you are an expert in another (assessing the value).

I've actually been in this exact situation as an expert witness. The defendant had written code in language "A", sold it, then wrote similar code in language "B". The question was whether code "B" had been written while looking at code "A".

The answer was yes, and I could prove it. Code often has a history that's apparent (e.g., you throw in an if statement to catch a weird input, and you add a comment like "fixing the wheelabrator-fry issue from december"). New code won't have the same history, and therefore should not have the same structure. If it does, the code must have been copied.

That's especially true if there are dated comments in the code.

What I wasn't asked was the economic value of the copying. Other experts handled that; I was just an expert in the two languages.

BTW: the final assessed value was much less than the cost of the trial. And I felt sorry for the defendant; most of the code had not been copied.

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

#224

Post by wang_li » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 8:31 PM UTC

Bamafan wrote: post #84

6stringmerc wrote: post #34

An interesting statement on things that may be relevant in the grand scheme of the trial, but, unless I'm really missing something here, the verdict was about busting an NDA (the Code being downstream of the NDA violation). Hence the $500M vs the $4B in damages. If it was just about code, then I'm sure Carmack's points would hold up just as well as they read in hindsight. But - and it's a big but - keep in mind his p…

I believe the "non-literal copying" thing simply refers to the insight gained from the R&D time he spent on Occulus while still an employee of Zenimax. 90% of HN members know that this deep understanding is FAR, FAR, FAR more valuable than blindly copying over code. It was this deep understanding that made Occulus valuable and it was seemingly funded on Zenimax's time and dime.

Perhaps it's not an issue, but it's not like Carmack learned stuff as an employee. He has been the principle architect of the graphics engine for every product he's worked on for the last 20 years. How do you take that out of your head when you change companies but stay in the same field?

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

#225

Post by cloudkj » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 8:32 PM UTC

addisonj wrote: post #10

I don't have the evidence so I can't make a judgement about whether Zenimax or Carmack is in the wrong here, but this does point out something strange in our court system and that is where a "jury of peers" which translates to normal people with little to no knowledge of the underlying subject matter. As our society becomes more specialized it seems a bit absurd to have people make judgements mostly based on how well…

Having just served on a jury, I can say that I've actually gained some confidence in the American justice system and its use of a jury of peers. When it comes down to it, the task for the jury is fairly straightforward, narrow, and well-defined: to examine the facts as laid out in the trial and to objectively execute the law as it is defined at the time while being fair and impartial. Their backgrounds and prior knowledge and experience are not supposed to come into play, and to the extent that the judge and attorneys have chosen a panel of objective, intelligent jurors, their backgrounds really do not and should not matter.

I recently read a comment that framed the law as being software. After my experience, I've come to think of juries as being the computers that run such "software" in the context of a trial: to execute the instructions as handed down by the judge, given the evidence and testimonies as factual inputs and to ultimately output a verdict that follows (as closely as possible) the rules codified in the law.

I feel that the problem really lies in the evidence provided by the expert witness. In this particular case, it sounds like there was an expert witness on both sides, but perhaps one witness was more effective than the other, at least to the jury. To reduce any bias, ideally there are (many) multiple witnesses providing testimony on the same issues, so that the evidence presented will average out to be as close to the factual truth as possible. Unfortunately, that's almost certainly not scalable in the context of a trial.

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

#226

Post by rayvd » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 8:33 PM UTC

addisonj wrote: post #10

I don't have the evidence so I can't make a judgement about whether Zenimax or Carmack is in the wrong here, but this does point out something strange in our court system and that is where a "jury of peers" which translates to normal people with little to no knowledge of the underlying subject matter. As our society becomes more specialized it seems a bit absurd to have people make judgements mostly based on how well…

How would it be assessed who is an 'expert' and who isn't? I worry this would fall to some bureaucracy and all of the pitfalls that lie therein.

I prefer the downsides and risks involved in a randomly selected jury pool.

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

#227

Post by gravypod » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 8:47 PM UTC

xxs wrote: post #211

gravypod wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should be able to just compile it with -O3 and then decompile it and rename all your variables back. You'll get a very wonky source output but it will be extremely different.

why would would you keep debug info like variable names while compiling w/ -O3 in the 1st place?

You woudln't. This would be for an intial obfuscation pass. You'd not do this for release but for sufficiently scrambling the code base.

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

#228

Post by sqeaky » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 8:52 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #186

sqeaky wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems you are asserting that people who don't understand anything about the core concept can make reasonable decisions based on contrived analogies. Perhaps you are right, but I don't think so. When both sides put forward equally convincing analogies and few, if any, of the jurors know what is actually going on then how do they choose which analogy to believe?

That argument sounds better in the abstract. In practice both sides get to cross examine these experts and they are going to attack the weak points in the arguments. Another consideration is in very close cases a random outcome is not necessarily a bad thing. Programmers like binary logic, but court cases are impacted by things like what someone thinks someone else was thinking. Being 'correct' in every case is less…

I agree that cross examination helps. I agree lawlessness is bad. However, what you you are proposing is pseudo-random solutions instead of lawlessness, which doesn't seem much better. Picking any subset of trials and saying it is okay for them to be wrong could mean setting wrong precedent for years to come. It can also mean bad outcomes and suffering for many and disproportionately poor people.

If the jurors don't understand the fundamentals of what they are deciding how will they interpret cross-examinations? Certainly not on the merit of the argument, because they simply can't.

If it just comes down to who can sound more confident while making their side of the argument then justice goes to whoever can afford the best lawyers. Which largely seems to match the system we have.

It is not a very good but it is better than lawlessness, but only just so.

Though we get more nuanced each time, I fear our debate has started running in circles. Thank you for making reconsidering some of my opinions.

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

#229

Post by fictioncircle » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 8:52 PM UTC

ue_ wrote: post #25

addisonj wrote: post #10

I don't have the evidence so I can't make a judgement about whether Zenimax or Carmack is in the wrong here, but this does point out something strange in our court system and that is where a "jury of peers" which translates to normal people with little to no knowledge of the underlying subject matter. As our society becomes more specialized it seems a bit absurd to have people make judgements mostly based on how well…

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…

> 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.

True but at the same time nothing says its all or nothing.

I really think there is an argument for cases like this to have ~4 people with degrees relevant to the case sitting on the jury which is likely enough to swing the jury's results if there is something that just wasn't communicated effectively or the issue being clouded by one party.

Sure there might be bias in that case, but I don't think its particularly pronounced when a civil suit is ultimately decided by a majority.

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

#230

Post by fauigerzigerk » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 8:56 PM UTC

shanemhansen wrote: post #181

arethuza wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we have evidence that STEMers are paragons of logical reasonable minded virtue outside of their particular domains?

You're getting downvoted, but over the last decade I've seen a pretty high number of STEMers that seem to confine their logical reasoning skills to very specific domains. Example (I'll let you be the judge of which one is being irrational): I know STEMers who are adamant atheists. I also know STEMers who are pretty devout and think that science supports all of their beliefs. For a less controversial example just look…

I agree with almost all of what you're saying, but the question isn't whether or not STEMers are very rational people. The question is whether they are better equipped than the average person to understand and scrutinize a logical argument that is presented to them in court.

Being better at that than the average population isn't a very high bar. Yes we make a lot of irrational choices and often times we will defend them in pseudo rational terms. Flame wars abound.

But the meta debate about the standard of proof for our claims is never far away. It counts for something to be able to come up with some sort of test or empirical support. Every front page story about medical experiments inevitably has a comment thread about correlation vs causality and various sorts of possible biases.

Do you really want to be judged by people who never had these sorts of debates and never had to defend their own arguments against this sort of criticism?