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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

#241

Post by dpark »

PeterisP wrote: post #234
dpark wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Peers are supposed to know you, your character, and your history. I don't think so. It's one thing to say that juries should be made of private citizens drawn from your nation/state/town. It's another thing entirely to say that juries should be made up of your buddies. Peer is not a synonym for neighbor. It means "equal".

They are just as supposed to know the victim, their character, and their history. There's no reason to suppose that a "close peer" jury would favor the defendant , it's just as likely to be the other way around.

On what is the claim that the jury is supposed to know any party based on?

Edit: To be clear, I agree with your premise that knowing the defendant does not necessarily bias a jury in favor of the defendant. I don't think there's any reason to assume the jury should have any knowledge of anyone, though. In fact if you do, you'll probably get removed from the jury.

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

#242

Post by jandrese »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #214
sfifs wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specifics matter in legal proceedings. In general, this argument would be laughed out of court of course. However, Carmack worked not only in the same domain, he worked on developing the exact same product at both companies - so this opens up to potential liability.

Yes, I think it all comes down to what copyright actually is. Is it the words on the paper, or the ideas behind them?

In other words, can you commit thoughtcrime?

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

#243

Post by DiabloD3 »

bshimmin wrote: post #65
erikbye wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Average Joe does not know what source code is, nor is he able to tell one piece of source code or one programming language apart from another, it is all gibberish to probably the majority of the jury. Hell, a few years back most Americans did not know that McDonald's was unhealthy, they had to be told this...

Let me share a conversation I had with a family friend a bit ago: she peers over my shoulder at my monitor, which has (let's say) a screenful of some Ruby on Rails app in Sublime Text Her: "Is that... code?" Me: "Yep, that's right. It's the code for a web site." Her: "Wow, your code is so beautiful!" Me (surprised): "Really? What makes you say that?" Her: "All those lovely colours! I didn't know you were so artistic…

That is terrifying.

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

#244

Post by jandrese »

leggomylibro wrote: post #91
TheCoelacanth wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like it is saying that Zenimax owns not only the code Carmack wrote while he was there, but also the knowledge and experience he gained while working there.

I think it's more that Zenimax thinks it owns the unique ideas that Carmack, a top talent in his field, created while he was working there. They're not angry that he wrote the same 4x4 matrix inverse function for both them and Oculus. Or more specifically, if Zenimax's claims are correct, while he was working on company time and equipment.

What is the alternative? Do we force everybody to undergo mind wipes whenever they leave the company so they don't take any skills they picked up on the job with them?

How many people can forget everything they know every time they get a new job?

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

#245

Post by jandrese »

pyb wrote: post #28
perfmode wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

John makes a good point. Here, transparency appears to be in truth's best interest.

From the downvotes, sounds like I'm the only one who is shocked by this.

You are reading something into the statement that nobody else can see. That's why you are getting downvotes.

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

#246

Post by Retric »

sqeaky wrote: post #228
Retric wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I mean if a group of experts might chose A 55% of the time and B 45% of the time then a 50/50 random outcome is not a real issue. A few places have elections where in case a tie they do a coin flip. The important thing is to remove bias not get extreme accuracy.

As to our court cases being biased for the wealthy that's a little more systemic than just highly technical cases. Even in clear cut cases having a competent legal team can make a massive difference, IMO the overall system was designed that way.

The problem is how to change things. If doctors made up the jurors in malpractice cases you would see much stronger bias. I would much rather have random people than wall street bankers judging wall street bankers or even worse FBI agents judging other FBI agents.

That said, I am open to the idea of civil suits allowing for more restrictive juries if both sides agree. If nothing else it may allow for shorter trials. Which is something I only considered though this conversation. So thanks.

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

#247

Post by nabla9 »

Battle between experts trying to convince people from the street is very fragile system. Arguments start from the scratch every time.

The idea of making expert witness testimonies as part of ones academic record is great.

Scientific expert testimony literature should be cumulative in the same way as legal precedents are. Code copying is case that comes up again and again. There should be convergence towards scientifically justified ways for experts to determine copying.

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

#248

Post by intherdfield »

794CD01 wrote: post #173
intherdfield wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You could say the same thing about anything people do in secret. I don't think that makes sense. There is no attempt to generalize this to things people do in secret. There is no claim that if something could risk your reputation then it follows that it should be made public. Carmack's assertion is only that this particular work (for which the witness does voluntarily and is paid for) should be made public so that…

The assertion is based on the idea that this thing you did is a reflection on who you are, so people who interact with you have a right to know about it so they can judge you by it. I agree that in this specific instance, it was the job of Oculus' legal team to discredit the report in front of the court. Publishing it after the fact for review by the public doesn't make sense, and calling for it is petty.

> Publishing it after the fact for review by > the public doesn't make sense, and calling for it is > petty.

Carmack isn't calling for it to be published. He only said he thinks the system should work that way.

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

#249

Post by rsync »

gregw2 wrote: post #162

It's kinda hard to square John's post-trial comments "I never tried to hide or wipe any evidence, and all of my data is accounted for, contrary to some stories being spread." with ZeniMax's post-trial comments at http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2017/02/01/zenima... that " (vi) Carmack intentionally destroyed data on his computer after he got notice of this litigation and right after he researched on Google…

"right after he researched on Google how to wipe a hard drive"

I find it difficult to believe that Carmack needs to google how to wipe a hard drive ...

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

#250

Post by sebastos »

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…

I think technical people are better equipped to appreciate how important a seemingly small engineering difference can be. You have to spend a lot of hours wrestling with a complex topic before you realize how hard those innovations are to come by, and how big of a deal they are.

Another tragic example of "tyranny of the tech-illiterate" was the Honeywell v Sperry Rand case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeywell,_Inc._v._Sperry_Rand.... One of the rulings re-attributed the invention of the computer to John Atanasoff based on his ABC machine. The judge ruled "close enough" despite a litany of hugely substantial differences between the ABC (basically an electronic calculator with a primitive electromechanical "memory"), and the ENIAC (the trunk of all modern computing). Like the Zenimax case, the ruling appeared to be based more on the court's intuitions about the circumstantial evidence than the actual technical facts.

I suppose you make the best judgment you can. It's just too bad we can't think of a way to select people who are capable of better judgments.

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