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Comment by jackmott | Hacker News Reader

One might want to wipe their drive even if they hadn't copied code, for any number of nefarious and non nefarious reasons.

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It's generally a good idea not to delete anything on a relevant drive after receiving a litigation hold. The jury is not going to draw a favorable conclusion from that combination of facts if you do.

And they shouldn't. A good way to think about the task of a jury is to ask: if I take 100 situations where these facts are present, what conclusion is correct in the plurality of cases? They are not there to speculate about alternative explanations, they are there to pick the explanation that is more likely than the others.

Is there any level of evidence that could convince you?

Dunno about him, but it would have to be a hell of a lot better than what they presented. They accuse Carmack of securely wiping evidence, so they had better present evidence that adequately proves it. And they haven't, so tough for them.

Whether anyone wiped evidence was not a fact that Zenimax had to prove. That data was deleted from Carmack's hard drive after he received a litigation notice is simply a piece of evidence the jury considered alongside all the other evidence (including testimony about alternative explanations for why data was deleted). From that evidence, Zenimax just had to prove that it was more likely than not code had been copied.

> Zenimax just had to prove that it was more likely than not code had been copied.

Isn't the standard in the US that one must "prove beyond a reasonable doubt", which seems like a higher standard than "more likely than not"?

"beyond a reasonable doubt" is only required in criminal cases. a "preponderance of evidence" is the requirement for civil cases.

Yup, and it's not a preponderance of evidence. As has been shown, it's quite possible the things they state are quite innocent.

I don't even have an opinion at this point, I'm not educated enough on the case. Though I think the case is sort of fundamentally absurd, in that Zenimax made games, Carmack helped get their games working on a VR headset. Then left to make VR headset, which Zenimax didn't make. The whole premise is odd to me. I wouldn't really care if he did copy his own code.

many of us wouldn't. In fact, this was my initial reaction.

However, many (especially people within the industry, so most of HN) disagree, as does the US legal code.

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