[gregmac]

The video is absolutely worth watching, but one of the more relevant bits is this:

> [...] in Dark Horse it's just the background texture for one of the verses. It has the same musical function as a chord progression or a drum groove: it serves to highlight the melody but it's not the song itself. Up until this point it seemed like only melodies could be copyrighted in the composition of song, however the recent court decisions surrounding Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines and Marvin Gaye's Got To Give You Up has thrown all of this into question.

> This is why the lawsuit demanded a trial by jury: because they wanted to confuse non-musician non expert jurors with fancy music theory jargon.

He also specifically calls out the expert witness, saying:

> You're doing it in a fairly intellectually dishonest manner because I sincerely doubt you would make the arguments that you made in court at [an] academic conference for example, or you wouldn't write them down in a scholarly article, because your academic peers would absolutely eviscerate you for saying some of those things -- and yet in front of a jury of your peers you said them.

[sitkack]

I don't understand why a Jury of Peers [1] wouldn't be comprised of domain experts and not just random people off the street. And it seems like having domain knowledge is likely to get one NOT selected for jury duty. Can any lawyers chime in on this (even armchair hn lawyers)?

[1] https://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-procedure/what-is-a-ju...

[tialaramex]

Juries are completely inappropriate tools for the job of deciding civil trials. Like lots of things that are crazy in the US the Americans did it as a perverse imitation of how England did it back when they became independent.

Today nobody else does this, England for example only really uses jury trial to decide serious criminal cases (for minor stuff there isn't a professional judge at all, a panel of lay magistrates decides, they mostly seem disappointed rather than angry - like parents whose teenager was caught smoking).

[ModernMech]

I always assumed it's peers as opposed to superiors. I.e. Your jury is not the king and queen but other commoners like you.

[dbcurtis]

> other commoners

Ummmm..... the Magna Carta was not about protecting the commoners from the king. It was about protecting the peerage from the king. "Jury of peers" is a jury of other members of the peerage trying a peer. Commoners were not part of the program.

[srfilipek]

A peer of the defendant?

Because the defendant was a musician in this case.

[sarah180]

The standard of "substantial similarity" in copyright law depends not on how an expert would see things, but on how a reasonable average person would see things. Juries are not perfect, but a jury of random people is probably the most qualified way to determine the question "would average people see these two things as substantially the same."

Leonard French—a YouTuber and actual copyright attorney—does a good job covering the legal standards and issues here: https://youtu.be/t-tsw6Z4eHc.

[srfilipek]

> a jury of random people is probably the most qualified way to determine the question "would average people see these two things as substantially the same."

A jury of random people can be confused and then convinced by lawyers. That's the way they like it, and that's the problem with jury selection - they chose people specifically because they are not knowledgeable.

[fuzz4lyfe]

Whats better? Experts that can be purchased? Elected or appointed judges who owe favors to those who elected or appointed them?

[wrs]

Juries are supposed to apply “common sense” as well as evaluate the veracity of testimony. If expert domain knowledge is necessary, expert witnesses will be called to present it. Experts on a jury are a problem because they will essentially provide alternate evidence outside the public court procedure (jury proceedings are secret), and because their expertise is not subject to challenge by the other side. (Imagine the Dunning-Kruger effect in a jury setting.)

[nominated1]

What, if any, blow-back can Todd Decker expect from this? Didn’t he just put his reputation in jeopardy?

[mc32]

But most of the people listening to his arguments are also not experts. I’d rather see him arguing with an expert who could have counter arguments. I’d like to believe him but right now I have to take his word for it.