DAVID BOIES, Special Trial Counsel, D.O.J. in U.S. v. Microsoft

excerpt from CNN Interview - January 29, 1999

"The results have just been incredible over the last five or six days, where, working around the clock, they have been able to analyze and deconstruct this videotape, not once or twice, but three separate times."

CNN Moneyline News Hour with Lou Dobbs

- January 29, 1999

"Microsoft's antitrust defense was thrown into disarray after the Justice Department discovered problems with videotaped evidence. The government might not have detected the problem if it were not for three men playing a quiet but critical role in the case."

"Kids Today! Think They Can Take On an Empire"

TIME Magazine - February 15, 1999

"HERE'S THE MOVIE PITCH: A Princeton professor and two twentysomethings take less than five minutes to outsmart the world's largest software firm. Actually, that's no movie. Late last month government expert ED FELTEN sat down on a sofa in the Justice Department "war room" with two grads from his computer-science-program -PETER CREATH, 23, and CHRISTIAN HICKS, 24 -- and stuck a tape in the VCR. Up came Microsoft's demonstration of how Felten's program to remove Internet Explorer made Windows run slower, important evidence for the defense in the ongoing antitrust suit. Almost immediately, all three were off the couch. Simultaneously, Hicks remembers, they'd spotted that the title bar was wrong, that the computer in that screenshot hadn't been "Feltenized." Upshot: Microsoft's most embarrassing week yet at the federal courthouse, as a company of 29,000 employees scrambled to produce a video that wasn't misleadingly edited. Hicks and Creath, who also have a software firm, Elysium Digital . . . simply went back to New Jersey."

"NERD TEAM NAILED M'SOFT TRIAL GOOF"

New York Post - February 4, 1999

"WASHINGTON - Two twentysomething computer geeks managed to accomplish this week something nobody in the high tech industry has been able to manage: They threatened to rock mighty Microsoft and its Windows colossus. Christian Hicks, 23, and Peter Creath, 24, are rail-thin, pale-faced computer scientists who run Elysium Digital, an obscure, four-man software company in Boston. They're now technical advisers to David Boies, the lead attorney for the Justice Department at the Microsoft antitrust trial."

"Microsoft trial: Company unable to repeat test"

Seattle Times - February 4, 1999

"The debacle over the videotaped computer demonstration would not have occurred if it weren't for two graduates of Princeton University, Christian Hicks, 23, and Peter Creath, 24, who have a computer-consulting company in Boston."

"Microsoft case dealt serious blow"

San Jose Mercury News - February 2, 1999

"But in the meantime, two technical experts retained by the government . . . had uncovered some discrepancies. Christian B. Hicks, 24, and Peter J. Creath, 23 -- who cofounded Elysium Digital LLC, a Boston-based computer consulting group -- noticed that the title bar of the Windows Update window on the Microsoft test machine contained the words 'Internet Explorer.' On Felten's stripped-down program, the title bar merely said 'Windows 98.'"