Carmack accused of stealing Oculus Rift tech

Eruanna said:

If you can't benefit or profit from problem solving, what is even the point? If we all go towards Stallman's attitudes towards it, there's no real motivation to learn coding in the first place, and if anything that will kill coding in general.

Even if everything was magically open-sourced right now, you'd still need software development. Bug fixes, porting to new architecture, developing brand new feature that have not yet been done anywhere, adapting existing software to optimize a given company's workflow, etc. There's always work to be done.

Eruanna said:

Coding is a real skill that takes time to master - just like wood carving, just like being a soldier, just like using Photoshop and/or AfterEffects. If a person can't make a profit from it - it becomes a hobby for everyone, and as a result everyone loses.

The examples you gave; craftsmen, soldiers or graphic editors, don't entail nearly as much technical obscurity as computer programming. Coding is hard and cryptic already as it is, but if locked away in fewer hands, it becomes far more distant from everyone's understanding and accountability. Liberty considered, how free can we be in a world where corporations and financial traders keep all the essential or root code to themselves? Let's not be naive, this topic has much to do with power and democracy. Stallman's stance exists because any link to closed-source code can make sustaining transparency and accessibility very tricky. You never know how you can end up embroiled in there. There's a hell of a long way to go between "making profit impossible" and the current inequality in access to and popular empowerment over the code that runs the global networks we all use. In the face of all this, a great deal of open-source coding isn't a hobby; it's a necessity.

Whatever the legalities are, people like Carmack spend their time making things, and giving them to everyone, basically for free (though you might have to buy the game/device first, to keep the power on, and keep the pizzas and diet Coke flowing).

People like Carmack devote most all of their thinking to this effort. These people should be applauded, and rewarded. Not sued by people claiming that "this piece of Carmack's efforts is mine, cause we gave him some money, and allowed him to type on our computer." We all have given Carmack some money, when we bought Doom and Doom II. We're not demanding anything else. In fact, Carmack gave us that code. It all seems misguided and ridiculous to me, regardless of the legalities. I think it sucks.

Apparently the trial started last week (how did no one have a reporter there covering it?) and Zuck himself is testifying tomorrow http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-palmer-luckey-to-testify-in-2-billion-zenimax-lawsuit-against-oculus-vr-2017-1

I hate to pull for the big guy, but I'm a Carmack fanboy.

Verdict: http://www.polygon.com/2017/2/1/14474198/oculus-lawsuit-verdict

"A Dallas, Texas jury today awarded half a billion dollars to ZeniMax after finding that Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey, and by extension Oculus, failed to comply with a non-disclosure agreement he signed.

In awarding ZeniMax $500 million, the jury also said that Oculus did not misappropriate trade secrets as contended by ZeniMax."

well it could have gone worse.

So if the appeals don't go through, where's that put Oculus value wise?

So I guess they found Carmack guilty of conversion (a somewhat more polite method of messing with someone else's property, basically) but I guess isn't on the hook for anything in particular, since the usual remedy is paying the fair market value of whatever you converted which doesn't really work for copies of computer code / documents.

Linguica said:

paying the fair market value of whatever you converted which doesn't really work for copies of computer code / documents.

They're not going with the cost of licensing for these things?

I just.... HAD to post this here.

http://www.pcgamer.com/zenimax-statement-reveals-john-carmack-googled-how-to-wipe-a-hard-drive/

Do we just live in a world written by The Onion now or something?

I think people underestimate how often programmers google stuff.

Assuming FaceBook can get and will go for an appeal, this will go on for quite awhile.

But, FaceBook would likely strike some kind of deal with ZeniMax to get them off their back, because ultimately it will save them money in the long run. So for all intents and purposes, ZeniMax won.

Gez said:

They're not going with the cost of licensing for these things?

Conversion is an ancient tort and is normally intended for, like, physical objects. The few cases I could find regarding intangible cyber property were usually about actually denying the plaintiff access to something, e.g., documents that the defendant deleted / returned to turn over, or control over a domain name. It seems a little unusual to find Carmack guilty of conversion for mere *copies* of emails and files that, as far as I know, Zenimax still had their own copies of. I would expect to see that contested on appeal.

Zenimax can and probably will argue that Carmack having copies of the files hurt their "dominion" over the property, which includes the right to exclude others from having / using it. But I am unaware if there is actually case law confirming that that is sufficient for a conversion tort.

edit: upon slightly more review, it looks like as of less than a decade ago, Texas law didn't even recognize a cause of action for conversion of intangible property, so now I am even more confused.

VGA said:

I think people underestimate how often programmers google stuff.

I lurk in a few programming forums where it seems no one googles anything. Maybe they just ask questions because they know someone will just code it for them.

Complete and utter BS that they won.

I'm kind of surprised to learn that destroying evidence, e.g. spoilation, often doesn't carry any sanctions beyond instructing the jury to draw a negative inference. There is no tort of spoliation in Texas.

Doesn't this create a strong incentive to destroy evidence? If the evidence in question is negative anyway, and there's a non-zero chance that the destruction won't be discovered, then why not do it? If it is discovered, then the worst that will happen is the jury draws a negative inference, which they would presumably have done when presented with the evidence anyway.

Avoozl said:

Complete and utter BS that they won.

Why?

I guess the only part that confuses me is how they didn't find them guilty of misappropriating trade secrets, but here:

http://www.pcgamer.com/jury-awards-500-million-to-zenimax-in-lawsuit-against-oculus-vr/

...it sounds like that part isn't even in question, if what Zenimax claims is true about certain Oculus employees copy-pasting sections of code.

'(ix) Facebook's lawyers made representations to the court about those same Oculus computers which the court's expert said were inaccurate. Oculus’ response in this case that it didn’t use any code or other assistance it received from ZeniMax was not credible, and is contradicted by the testimony of Oculus programmers (who admitted cutting and pasting ZeniMax code into the Oculus SDK), as well as by expert testimony.'

Am I missing something here?

Jonathan said:

I'm kind of surprised to learn that destroying evidence, e.g. spoilation, often doesn't carry any sanctions beyond instructing the jury to draw a negative inference. There is no tort of spoliation in Texas.

For what it's worth, this was a *federal* court case, and federal rules of civil procedure provide for sanctions for spoliation of electronic evidence.

Caffeine Freak said:

I guess the only part that confuses me is how they didn't find them guilty of misappropriating trade secrets

Here are the sort of "trade secrets" Zenimax was claiming:




I think the jury (rightly) found that these "secrets" are really the sort of obvious stuff that anyone working on VR would, and has, discovered through the process of making a HMD usable and bearable, and I'm pretty sure all of which were developed outside of Carmack & co's efforts.

Even without believing it to be fancy special golden secret super-code, taking code from Zenimax is nevertheless a copyright violation, which the jury dinged Oculus for to the tune of $50 million or whatever.

John Carmack's thoughts on the trial

Zenimax can´t be serious with that statement.....


"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," the statement says. "And data on other Oculus computers and USB storage devices were similarly deleted (as determined by a court-appointed, independent expert in computer forensics)."

LaughingMan008 said:

I just.... HAD to post this here.

http://www.pcgamer.com/zenimax-statement-reveals-john-carmack-googled-how-to-wipe-a-hard-drive/

Do we just live in a world written by The Onion now or something?

This is a shitty and annoyingly scathing and misleading headline, id expect better from YouTube video comments. (before they were arranged in order of popularity)

Cant confirm exactly what happened but if I'm holding a half a million dollars worth of information that needs to get deleted to cover my tracks, you can bet your life that i would read every little word of documentation on that particular brand of hard drive to make sure it doesnt leave any sort of metadata or file recovery shit behind. I cant stand the internet anymore.

40oz said:

This is a shitty and annoyingly scathing and misleading headline, id expect better from YouTube video comments. (before they were arranged in order of popularity)

Cant confirm exactly what happened but if I'm holding a half a million dollars worth of information that needs to get deleted to cover my tracks, you can bet your life that i would read every little word of documentation on that particular brand of hard drive to make sure it doesnt leave any sort of metadata or file recovery shit behind. I cant stand the internet anymore.

This is not something I do every day, but couldn't you just degauss the HDD and that'd do the trick? It appears that even neodymium magnets aren't able to damage the contents of an HDD, but can actually physically damage it if left too close for prolonged periods of time.

You could, but it'd be obvious that you did in the first place.
In some cases, it's not the data itself that's incriminating, it's the absence of it. In this case, it was the actions of Carmack alone that were incriminating (nuking 95% of the after having looked up how to).

Mind you, using magnets without opening the drive is a very slow and inconsistent way of doing it. A few weeks slow.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/zenimax-files-injunction-against-oculus-over-use-o/1100-6448175/

Now, ZeniMax has filed further papers against Oculus--which is owned by social media giant Facebook--requesting that Oculus's products using the stolen code be removed from sale. Specifically, ZeniMax is seeking to block sales of its mobile and PC developer kits, as well as technology allowing the integration of Oculus Rift with development engines Unreal and Unity, reports Law360.

If the injunction isn't granted, ZeniMax wants a share of "revenues derived from products incorporating its intellectual properties," suggesting a 20 percent cut for at least 10 years. ZeniMax argues the previous settlement of $500 million is "insufficient incentive for [Oculus] to cease infringing."

Wild Dog said:

Zenimax can´t be serious with that statement.....


"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..."

Joke of the day. Seriously ZeniMax? Why would he need to Google that? lol

rodster said:

Joke of the day. Seriously ZeniMax? Why would he need to Google that? lol

Because he knows enough about computer science to know that there are stuff he needs to look up?


He didn't search for a youtube tutorial on how to drag a file to recycle bin icon. He searched for a way to erase a file that would resist professional forensic tools developed to recover and undelete files. Why would he have had a file shredder program already installed before?

Besides, he recognized that he did search for that. As ridiculous as you claim it to be, it's real.

Gez said:

Because he knows enough about computer science to know that there are stuff he needs to look up?


He didn't search for a youtube tutorial on how to drag a file to recycle bin icon. He searched for a way to erase a file that would resist professional forensic tools developed to recover and undelete files. Why would he have had a file shredder program already installed before?

Besides, he recognized that he did search for that. As ridiculous as you claim it to be, it's real.

LMAO... A rocket scientist, that knows the inner-working of how data is stored on a hard-drive, googles how to delete files so forensics doesn't find it.

That's just flat silly.

There's nothing silly about a smart person looking up how to do something that they aren't intimately familiar with in order to find out how to do it properly. That's what MAKES you smart.