Tweets aren't under oath or anything, but it opens up Carmack to lots of questions and possibly affects his credibility.
Often times cases come down to "he said / she said" types of claims and how a jury views them.
If ZeniMax mentions the tweets in court, it will likely be to try and make Carmack look like he acted out of hand, and that he rushed to make claims that arne't true (i.e. the IP / code distinction the poster makes).
Here's the thing about software suits. Most judges / juries are in a TERRIBLE position when it comes to evaluating the nuance involved in a suit like this. Think about the average person and how much they understand about what you do.
Lawyers will try to boil it down to themes and narratives that portray you as "bad." "Winning" in terms of how you evaluate claims or the press or your followers evaluate claims does not matter. It's all about how the lawyers convince a judge or jury you are wrong.
However even posting honest, accurate articles online can come back to haunt you. Unless written very precisely, words can be interpreted by different people differently and often in a way that wasn't intended by the author.
This process doesn't have to be a cynical twisting of words - naturally, a reader's interpretation will be informed by their pre-existing point of view. When that view is one of a litigant, it can open up new issues in a case and lead to new ways to analyse evidence.
If you are posting about a case, make sure you're doing it calmly and definitely get it edited by your lawyer!
[edited for accuracy, typos]
If he denied they were, he would be asked further questions and possibly caught in a lie. Such as "is this the only time that your account has been used by someone other than yourself?" or "So you are saying that this is the only tweet that you didn't make but the others before and after you did". And so on. My guess is that he would be advised to tell the truth to prevent getting further trapped as far as his credibility. There may also be other people that he discussed the tweets with that could be brought into the picture as well under oath in court I'm guessing. Bottom line: Denial is easier said than done.
Whilst I would nearly always go for shutting up, we've probably all witnessed the David being sued by a Goliath and their only viable action is to make it know and get support.
That isn't what's happening here though... but no rule is black and white.
1. GET OFF SOCIAL MEDIA. Everything you say and do will make you a target. The only things you can say that might help you would be contrition, so if you're not willing to do that, get the hell off social media. This is also good because it removes you from having to read things about yourself that people are saying. People's talk will not harm you; your reaction to people's talk will harm you.
2. GET AN OFFLINE JOURNAL. If you have strong feelings, write them out. Write until you can't feel anymore. But don't put it online; keep it offline. The purpose is to have an exercise that gets your thoughts out, and to be able to read through your thoughts and clarify them later. Write letters to the people you're angry with, then review them and edit them many times, and never send them.
3. TALK TO FRIENDS. It's incredibly easy to let internalizing your feelings change how you think, change your memories, and turn you into a shell of your former self. You can even develop anxiety disorders or PTSD if this gets out of hand. Talk to people who understand and love you and let them keep you in check. You need positive outside influences to keep yourself sane. Talk to a good psychiatrist if you can.
4. KEEP THE BIG PICTURE IN MIND. It's easy to confuse yourself and wrestle over details. Start by considering the intent of your actions, and work from there to understand the whole chain of events, impartial and without emotion. It takes a while to get there. Be totally honest with yourself, but don't convince yourself of things that you didn't do.
IANAL, but this seems like bad advice. If there's litigation involved, any sort of apology could be taken as an admission of guilt.
The only thing I'd add is that it can be worth being visible about this. If you can make a polite and neutral statement before disappearing, that can help. E.g., "I wasn't expecting such a strong reaction; I obviously need to take some time to think this over and talk with friends before saying more in public."
It seems you'd almost need another lawyer, who knows the best people in each specialty, to advise you.
This recent high-profile case has been thrown out because nobody that legal aid is willing to pay (for the defendants) for is capable of handling it. Even the first step, "read 10,000 pages of documents", is not affordable since the legal aid cuts.
That document describes the desperate search for someone suitable and willing ("silk" == barrister or QC, required at this level of court)
This is a flaw in the legal system. I'd be surprised that the monarch doesn't have power to order someone, a QC say, to take the trial on.
Also, aside, "bro bono" (para 19), first time I seen that one - taking on a job for free under obligation to family/friends.
--
Edit: typo at para.85 adds more weight to my previous thoughts on needing more contextual spell checking. "scare resources" is almost always going to be a typo.
Find someone who's had to deal with something similar to find out who they used and their experience.
Contact a state or local bar association. In Wisconsin our state bar has a lawyer referral program. They're not necessarily the best in their field, but they're a good start, and a limited consult might be free or of little cost.
See also: http://www.popehat.com/2011/05/27/how-to-cold-call-a-lawyer-...
We talk maybe once a year, as I rarely need legal advice, but it's enough to keep the relationship alive. If I ever needed a legal specialist, I'd instantly go to him for a referral. And I'd use him to double-check any advice from the specialist.
The first time, it seems a little weird paying somebody $200-500 to, say, look over an employment contract. I was used to half-assing that myself, which cost nothing. But now I look at it as two kinds of insurance. First, you're drastically lowering the risk that there's something in the documents you missed. Second, if something bad does go down, your lawyer's now involved; it's not a new matter, it's something they blessed. And as a practical matter, negotiating contract points is much easier when you can, "My laywer says X" instead of, "I'm no expert, but I think X".
She may have to deal with legal repercussions because of her actions on Twitter, but I can't help but think that nothing would have changed had she kept silent or quietly hired an employment lawyer after being forced out.
1. http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/19/5526574/github-sexism-scan...
2. http://recode.net/2014/04/21/julie-ann-horvath-on-github-inv...
3. http://www.dailydot.com/business/julie-ann-horvath-names-git...
Additionally, she's incurred significant personal liability in the process.
> She may have to deal with legal repercussions because of her actions on Twitter, but I can't help but think that nothing would have changed had she kept silent or quietly hired an employment lawyer after being forced out.
I can't help but think the court of public opinion has been used to bludgeon an opponent, not achieve justice.
The public absolutely lacks the facts necessary to judge the merits of the accusations, and the objectivity necessary won't be forthcoming through inciting angry internet mobs. This wasn't something as simple as Sterling's overt racism -- and even then, the public's ability to observe and act on his overt racism wasn't possible until it saw the cold light of day through objective and verifiable evidence.
The safest and likely most productive way for GitHub to be held to account, if GitHub as an organization needed to be held to account, was by providing a clear, objective statement of the allegations, vetted by her lawyer, and if possible, a tenacious lawsuit and refusal to settle for anything less than a public statement.
Enough of them had a basis in fact to get a founder fired.
I think it's great when people speak up about bad conditions: it's a big way that exploitative and oppressive behavior gets remedied. It seemed like Horvath knew the risks she was running, and I admire her bravery. But I wouldn't want people speaking up to be heedless about the risk they're taking.
It's worth stating that because people are treating it as if a famed IP lawyer has made a pronouncement of fact, when in actuality it's just someone giving, like, an opinion, man.
Let me use an example: have you ever had a less-than-friendly breakup? Whose fault was it? Do you think both of you would answer that question the same way? At the time of the breakup, how much conviction did you have that you were in the right? How sure are you that a third party, that's not in either of your heads, would share your view with the same conviction?
1. Defending yourself makes you look guilty.
2. Defending yourself can provide legal ammunition to the opposition.
3. If it's not a legal matter, defending yourself can provide the opposition with words to manipulate to make you look even worse.
4. If they're already making spurious allegations against you, your replies will just prompt them to make more spurious allegations, much of which you may not be able to disprove. Their process of continually coming up with "new information", even if it's fake, will seem genuine to outsiders (due to cognitive bias). Responding just gives them new avenues to attack.
5. If you do defend yourself, it has to be in the form of an attack on the opposition, to discredit them. They can continue to come up with new claims all day which will just make people believe them more. You have to make it so people don't buy anything they say.
6. Besides the tactics of one-on-one mud-slinging, multiple parties provides greater weight to claims or concerns. Even if you have proof that someone is wrong, if they have 5 people all claiming the same thing, the crowd will believe them over you.
7. If this involves some kind of tight-knit in-group or community, you have to completely discredit your opposition for anyone to give a crap what you say.
The biggest problem with defending yourself is that you think the truth will win out, or the truth will come out in the end. It doesn't. The most convincing tactics win out. Lies are a lot easier weapons to use than the truth, and a lot more effective. And all of this also becomes a lot more difficult depending on the circumstances of the claims. Nobody will care if you're right if it looks like you might be wrong.
As a very highly paid barrister once said to my father "your mistake is that you think because you're right, you're going to win. You won't."
In a court of law being right may not be enough.
No, it confuses silence with confirmation of its prejudice. If the court of public opinion does not think you're guilty your silence will support that, if the court of public opinion thinks you're guilty your silence will support that.
* Public opinion has little or no monetary value where the courts have tremendous costs. Things said in public to influence public opinion can increase your court costs (possibly including judgement costs) tremendously.
* The public's attention span, and thus its opinion, generally is measured in days, maybe weeks. Court verdicts are forever.
There are probably many other situation in which that is not the case, but here I really can’t see anything bad happening as a consequence of Carmack not responding publicly.
About other things that people, particularly celebs, are taken to court for - absolutely.
Circular statement error. Parser 'sploded. Go to sleep? [Y/n]
Also, I didn't get the impression that Carmack was "angry" when he tweeted that. I always get the impression that he is pretty calm about all of the things he's saying, and the two tweets being referenced are just statements about his perception on the case. Since anger is the tone of the entire "mistake" from the article's perspective, it seems the article author is the one jumping to conclusions and writing things on the internet before they're due.
The actual defendant for now is Oculus Rift (because I suspect that's where the money is), but Carmack is very much in the line of fire (as the one who allegedly did the deed) and is currently CTO of Oculus Rift, so even if he's not the named party he definitely is in a defensive position here.
On top of that his current interest is in this particular case probably not aligned with Oculus Rift.
That means that your words should be weighed on a gold scale, especially when uttered through a public medium. I've fixed the post to take into account your comments.
Blackmail is not a sound legal strategy if you have a lot to lose. If you're on your last dime and you don't own anything that can be seized you might try this route.
How exactly? Plenty of people sue a company, lose the case, and still do a lot of damage to the company because of the distraction and public confidence. One example, is startups getting sued that are looking for another round of investment. They are definitely harmed even if they win the lawsuit. It cuts both ways. Sometimes a victory can be made to cost more than settling -- for either side. That's why people settle. If you can make the PR cost higher, the price to settle comes down.
Corporate lawyers exist to protect the corporation.
Carmack made a very clear, short public message about it. Rather than being any kind of admission, it was the opposite. A complete denial. How could Zenimax use that to strengthen their case? He's likely to repeat the same denial to the court anyway.
I'm not pretending I know better than the common wisdom, just trying to understand it better. If you were Zenimax, how would you use this tweet against him?
That alone makes me believe this was not vetted by his lawyer unless they specifically wanted to misdirect the opposition. I don't think that's likely, and such misdirection would most likely fail anyway assuming the opposite side is halfway competent.
Making falsifiable claims in public simply does not help.
As for how Zenimax could use this against Carmack, let's not make their lives easier than we have to.
My stress levels decreased hugely when all communication was put into the hands of our lawyers - and it was eventually resolved with both sides walking away and paying their own expenses, which wasn't great as we had done nothing wrong but was probably the least worst option.
Honestly - if someone raises a legal action against you - talk to a lawyer who specializes in the relevant area and do what they tell you, which is likely to include no public statement without their approval.
Having been involved in a lawsuit last year, even after I won, I still don't dare to publicly talk about it for fear or repercussions. I simply ask myself: what do I have to gain, and what do I have to lose?
Usually the risks and impact of the things I have to lose outweigh the things I have to gain, and it's a good way of making myself shut up.
For civil matters, although IANAL I think similar reasons apply, so similar answer: Don't Talk to the Public. If you're truly famous enough to need to break this rule, then you need an attorney who specializes in high-profile cases like this.
Edit: By "cases like this", I mean an actor or athlete level of celebrity. Probably not John Carmack, despite how famous and awesome he may be within our circles. Really, the smartest thing is to just "shut up". Even though a false accusation is a genuine personal violation and you want to defend yourself, the best defense usually won't be DIY.
Carmack quite famously made "Fuck You Money" over a decade ago. He was driving garages full of super expensive cars. He should have been the one with the levers.
Instead he became, effectively, an employee again. Why? Why would he do that?
