Next time you need to dig through a massive amount of publicly-available information to find prior art, research copyrights or patent filings, would you hire a) a team of experts* or b) an intern and spend $1,000 on Mechanical Turk** (or, more possibly, c) both)?

Quoted deep in an article by Blaise Alleyne in Techdirt, Music Fans And ‘Amateur Musicologists’ May Impact Coldplay/Satriani Copyright Battle, three partners in the Intellectual Property Group at Kilpatrick Stockton LLP discuss the role of “amateur musicologists in Joe Satriani’s lawsuit against Coldplay for copyright infringement:

What makes the Internet commentary regarding the two songs particularly interesting is that much of it replicates the type of expert analysis that both sides will likely use if the case goes forward. In music copyright infringement cases, it is rare for parties to rely solely on bare assertions of copying or independent creation. Instead, they frequently engage “musicology” experts to undertake detailed analyses of every element of alleged similarity between the two works and conclude whether all or portions of one work were copied from the other. The parties and their experts in [this case] should consider the analyses of the “amateur musicologists” that have weighed in via the Internet and other media, if for no other reason than they may be informative of how a jury might ultimately view the case…

While Satriani v. Martin may not go to trial for a variety of reasons, it is clear that user-generated content sites like YouTube have the potential to alter the way music cases — and other types of copyright case — are developed. Because advances in technology allow the public to participate in real-time infringement debate, future parties would do well to monitor this “chatter” as it could uncover evidence and theories that may be helpful to the case of the copyright owner, the alleged infringer or both. [emphasis added]

Alleyne adds to the commentary:

The online discussion is largely what has made this case so unique. There have been successful copyright infringement lawsuits over melodies in the past …, but never has the public been able to participate so much in the debate.

…The melodies are undoubtedly similar, but the legal question is whether or not Coldplay copied from Satriani. It’s not just Coldplay’s word against Satriani’s, but music fans and “amateur musicologists” are gathering evidence and providing theories which are having a noticeable impact on the proceedings.

And people say the web is all just noisy chatter; done right, the unorganized mass of people can influence institutions with more power than ever before.

Obviously experts and amateurs have their place: the opportunity is using combinations of both in the right ways and situations.

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* Even “experts” have their odd deficiencies.
** Amazon’s Mechanical Turk: a “crowdsourcing marketplace that enables computer programs to co-ordinate the use of human intelligence to perform tasks which computers are unable to do.”