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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

#21

Post by wvenable »

trendia wrote: post #5

This struck out at me: > There are objective measures of code similarity that can be quoted, like the edit distance between abstract syntax trees ... If this became the primary legal metric, then programmers who stole code would change the code so that functions achieved the same output with practically no AST similarity. That is, they could maximize functional similarity while minimzing code similarity. This would b…

This is like the joke about plagiarizing an essay: You can beat the automated check tools by using multiple sources of information and then re-writing them in your own words.

Also Copyright protects the expression of an idea, not the idea itself (that would be patent). You don't have to go through this much trouble to write code that achieves the same output.

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

#22

Post by pseudometa »

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…

Sitting on a jury yourself should alleviate you from worries about jurors not being experts themselves. Jurors are not experts in law, yet every case they sit on the lawyers bring in people to educate the jurors on the law and all aspects that pertain to a case. It is incredibly educational sitting on a jury.

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

#23

Post by gravypod »

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…

No matter how removed someone is from your field of expertise you should be able to consisely make a case for why you aren't at fault and why. You should also be able to demonstrate using basic logic that the simplest components of two source trees (something that is extremely basic) can show resemblance to another extremely basic component. For example the similarity of example code.

How many example source files have you downloaded that demonstrate a graphics library by drawing a cube. I bet they share a decent amount of similarity across most engines. That doesn't mean they are copies.

It is through logic like this that our courts are meant to function.

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

#24

Post by perfmode »

pyb wrote: post #12

"The expert witness circuit is surely tempting for many academics, since a distinguished expert can get paid $600+ an hour to prepare a weighty report that supports a lawyer’s case. I don’t have any issue with that, but testifying in court as an expert should be as much a part of your permanent public record as the journal papers you publish. In many cases, the consequences are significant. There should be a danger t…

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

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

#25

Post by ue_ »

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 ought to be composed of the peers of the defendant. As to how that works when there's a corporation on trial, I don't know. I have the funny image of Google and Oracle being judged by Microsoft, IBM and the FSF in the jury box :)

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

#26

Post by Filligree »

gravypod wrote: post #23
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…

No matter how removed someone is from your field of expertise you should be able to consisely make a case for why you aren't at fault and why. You should also be able to demonstrate using basic logic that the simplest components of two source trees (something that is extremely basic) can show resemblance to another extremely basic component. For example the similarity of example code. How many example source files ha…

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.

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

#27

Post by barrkel »

trendia wrote: post #5

This struck out at me: > There are objective measures of code similarity that can be quoted, like the edit distance between abstract syntax trees ... If this became the primary legal metric, then programmers who stole code would change the code so that functions achieved the same output with practically no AST similarity. That is, they could maximize functional similarity while minimzing code similarity. This would b…

If you're genuinely mutating the AST, you'll end up with a different program that does something different or performs differently. There's only so many ways you can write a loop and they all look loop-like, whether it's for / while / do / tail recursion. But if you have a program that doesn't contain a loop at that point at all, or loops over something different, then you've got a different program.

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

#28

Post by pyb »

perfmode wrote: post #24
pyb wrote: post #12

"The expert witness circuit is surely tempting for many academics, since a distinguished expert can get paid $600+ an hour to prepare a weighty report that supports a lawyer’s case. I don’t have any issue with that, but testifying in court as an expert should be as much a part of your permanent public record as the journal papers you publish. In many cases, the consequences are significant. There should be a danger t…

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.

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

#29

Post by sfifs »

The problem for John Camack was I think he was on both sides of the table writing code - so he wrote the code at Zenimax & re-wrote the code at Oculus. From a layman's perspective, he very well could have been "copying".

Normally when you design clean room implementations, you use different people and make sure that the people who write the code never see the prior written code and the person giving the spec doesn't see the newly written code.

They were just in-sufficiently cautious legally, possibly un-surprising given Carmack's prior history in founding Id software, and got hit with a lawsuit.

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

#30

Post by cdmckay »

pyb wrote: post #12

"The expert witness circuit is surely tempting for many academics, since a distinguished expert can get paid $600+ an hour to prepare a weighty report that supports a lawyer’s case. I don’t have any issue with that, but testifying in court as an expert should be as much a part of your permanent public record as the journal papers you publish. In many cases, the consequences are significant. There should be a danger t…

It doesn't sound like a threat to me. He's basically saying there should be reputation consequences for being a dishonest expert witness.
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