I agree with pulykamell. Telling someone how to do XYZ magic trick is simply knowledge. It’s no more “unethical” than if someone tells people how to do something with PHP – since I make my living doing Web development should I have those threads locked? I don’t get paid just for knowing PHP. I get paid for knowing PHP, applying it in a way that the users want and need, and doing so in a way that creates minimal overhead on the server. Magicians don’t get paid for knowing magic tricks. They get paid for knowing magic tricks and using them along with general showmanship to entertain people. There is a slippery slope in this thread, but not the one TubaDiva thinks.
I think this “ethical argument” stinks too.
I was going to cite an example (just like **NotQuite… ** did) that proves just how absurd it is. I bet you that the president of the Auto Mechanics Guild (I just made thast up, BTW) would just love to proclaim how unethical it is for us to know how to change our own oil, replace our own wiper blades and repair our own dings. “You’re taking the food out of the mouths of auto mechanics’ children! It’s unethical!”
Yeah, right.
Question: Let’s say someone has posted on this forum “How did David Coperfield make the Statue of Liberty disappear?”
In one of his popular Big Secrets books, William Poundstone reveals Copperfield’s method. Would it be unethical to paraphrase Poundstone’s exposé?
Wouldn’t the same hold true for cooking recipes, origami, drawing tips, home decorating ideas, and sewing?
Yet there are plenty of free sites on the net that tell you how to do all of those things, but no one is questioning whether they are taking anything away from the skill, talent, and livelihood of those who do it best.
Last time I checked, auto mechanics did not hold intellectual property rights.
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
I object to TubaDiva’s over-reaction to my and other posts that “revealed” the “secret” of the trick. In speaking with Mr. Dickson, Tuba, did you make it clear that we were talking about a simple bit of sleight of hand, and not a major mechanical show trick?
While I might agree with your position if someone were posting the detailed plans for a complex and expensive David Copperfield illusion, the trick in question is simply not “the product of someone’s work and often their livelihood” in the same sense. It is a small and simple stunt that has undoubtedly been figured out independently by many different people. And telling you or me how to do it takes away nothing from a magician who has mastered it and performs it in his act.
stuyguy is right that the magicians’ so-called code of ethics regarding magic “secrets” is merely self-serving posturing. It is also foolish and arguably unethical, since it seeks to restrict the spread of information for no valid reason. What magicians don’t understand is that even if their secrets were published on the front page of USA Today, attendance at magic shows would not be affected, since, as others have explained, it is the skill of the magician that makes the magic, not the mechanics of the trick.
There are plenty of Web sites out there with information on how to do small, simple magic tricks with cards, coins, and rubber bands. Some try to sell the information, but others give it away. Neither is unethical, nor is linking to them. TubaDiva is mistaken and should reconsider this decision.
Bordeland: Audience sits on a platform that slowly rotates a few degrees while the curtains are closed.
In all of these cases, paraphrase and fair use applies on this site.
We do not allow you to directly republish the work of other people, though. For example, if some of you allowed it, you’d never have to buy another Sunday paper again to read Dave Barry’s column, you could always read it here. However, it’s copyrighted, so you have to get your Dave Barry jones satisfied somewhere else.
We don’t allow you to reprint in toto a recipe you borrowed from Martha Stewart, either.
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
The anti-telling magic secret argument seems to boil down to, “Some people make money because most people are ignorant about how to do some particular things. Out of sympathy for their livelihood, we will conspire with them to maintain the general audience’s ignorance.”
On a board devoted to fighting ignorance, isn’t that the wrong argument to adopt as policy?
Every time someone tells someone how to remove a virus, aren’t computer repair shops losing a potential customer?
Every time someone reassures someone about a harmless symptom, isn’t a doctor somewhere losing an appointment?
Every time someone explains how to paint a wall or change a tire or get a good deal on a used car, aren’t we cutting into the income of someone, somewhere?
What makes magicians so special that this board will abandon its philosophy for the sake of their pockets?
Personally, I don’t know what this rubber band trick is, and I couldn’t care less what the secret of doing it is. I just find this sudden switch from ‘knowledge is good’ to ‘some knowledge should be hidden from all those except for those who will pay for it’ jarring.
Which seems to be the only measure being applied to the thread so far: links to ‘free’ sites have been made deleted, but the links where you have to pay are fine. A ‘free’ offered explanation written by a member is deleted, but a pointer to a commercially available book is apparently fine.
Could I suggest this decision needs to be rethought and discussed further?
Right. And what a bunch of us are saying is, neither do magicians (at least in the area of simple sleight of hand), despite what magicians themselves might claim.
This is a non-sequitur. No one was talking about violating anyone’s copyright.
Most magic tricks, and virtually all sleight of hand, aren’t the unique expressions of an individual the way a Dave Barry column is. They are craft, like baking and sewing, and as such have been developed over the centuries by many different people, and reinvented independently many times. Only a very few large stage illusions could reasonably be considered the intellectual property of a specific individual, and even so, most popular stage illusions (sawing someone in half, making a large animal disappear) don’t fall into that category because their principles are all well-known, and have been for centuries.
The Web site whose link you removed from my post didn’t steal that description from the trick’s inventor. The people who are selling a description in the links that you left in my post didn’t invent it, either. They stole it as much as the free site did. Which is to say, not at all, because it is common knowledge. Except, apparently, here.
The original poster asked for instructions on a specific trick that is published and copyrighted under that name specified.
Mr. Dickson knows the trick well; well enough to also quote, from memory, the chapter in the book where it’s published.
The mechanics are not copyrighted; the directions/instructions/plans are. (Can’t copyright the idea behind it, but can copyright how it’s told.)
Because other websites publish information, copyrighted or not, that makes it permissible for us? I spend time every week asking websites all over the place not to reproduce Cecil’s columns or lift sections of this very board, am I supposed to throw up my hands and say, “That’s okay, go to, everybody does it, that’s all right.”?
As the original poster stated, he wanted the information – the fruit of someone else’s labor – without paying for it. He wanted the information behind the trick, in fact, to quote:
That’s not fair use. And not fair. And not ethical.
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
Interesting argument, but like ftg said, I don’t see how this is any different from asking for spoilers to a movie with a twist ending, because you want to see what the twist is but don’t want to pay.
Yep, that’s it. IIRC, on a later TV special, Copperfield himself demonstrated how the SoL disappearance was done.
Tuba there are two issues here which, with all due respect, you are blurring.
Everyone agrees that copying copyrighted text, word-for-word is a violation of intellectual property rights. That means no cut&pasting out of a Martha Stewart recipe book or a magician’s handbook.
But, if someone were to retell Martha’s recipe for goulash or explain how to do a magic trick in their own words they are violating no one’s intellectual property rights.
IMO, the OP seeking an explanation to the rubber band trick falls under case #2. Sure, if someone C&P’ed a reply from a copyrighted work you would have been right to delete that post. But if the respondant merely composed a reply in their own words I see nothing wrong.
bolding mine
If it’s not illegal, then it’s not an issue of the law, and it falls into the same category as all the other skills and methods previously mentioned. The idea of intellectual property doesn’t seem to hold any weight.
It seems that you’ve made your decision wholly based off the word of two obviously biased and very interested parties (ianzin and Mr. Dickson).
So long as nobody is copying a method/set of instructions/recipe verbatim from a lawfully copyrighted work, I don’t see the issue.
Incidentally, I did not select the recipe example casually. It is a perfect analogy for the the magician’s trick. Someone earns a living dreaming up recipes. But recipes can not be copyrighted. Their written directions, yes. But the recipe itself? No.
So if I know how the trick is done, and I write a description in my own words, you should let me post that, right? Because I’m not copying their way of telling it, I’m just sharing the idea.
As far as ethics, are you saying that sharing any idea that someone else makes money by selling is unethical? You yourself admit that the idea does not legally belong to them. But what if I wrote a book on the Theory of Relativity? I don’t own the ideas behind relativity, (just as they don’t own the idea for the magic trick), but by your reasoning it would be unethical for someone to attempt to explain relativity on these boards, even if they did it in their own words, because it might prevent someone from buying my book and thus might cost me money.
Obviously, you haven’t banned explanations of physics, so I’d appreciate it if you could explain to me how this is consistent with your rule about sharing the ideas behind magic tricks.
Soooo…
If I had asked the question “So what happens at the end of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire?” you would censor someone’s reply??
I could see if someone sent the text word for word that it would be wrong, but someone paraphrasing in their own words isn’t out of line.
In my original request I was not looking for published pictures or a word for word description out of a copyrighted book, I was looking for a description from someone who “knows” how to do it and could explain it in their own words.
In fact “Crazy man’s handcuffs” was just one person’s name for the trick. The book I saw it in it was simply called “rubber band trick”.
(This is the message board where I discovered how David Blaine levitates isn’t it?)
I am very sorry TubaDiva, but your posts and reasoning just aren’t consistent. You seem to agree that no true IP rights are being violated if people discuss in their own words how a trick is done. And yet you censored one such post, and posted a completely contrary response to the automechanics “what if?”.
There are an immense number of professions on the planet that could make more money if extreme limits were placed on who could obtain that knowledge. If there was a valid IP legal issue involved, okay, but when there clearly isn’t, then forget the blankety-blanks.
If someone wants to say in their own words, or wants to link to a page of such, then there is no justification for censorship.
Every single post, regardless of topic, is a potential IP abuse. We have seen people cut and paste large chunks of text from other sources and present them as their own posts all the time. Of course that is not good.
However, I see no reason at all why posts about magic tricks, of all things, should be singled out for extra protection.
Just forget magic tricks as somehow being worthy of special distinction and treat all threads, regardless of topic, the same.
I am having a hard time following this thread, but as far as I can tell Harry is wearing handcuffs while inside a large wooden horse that is slowly revolving on a platform. He jumps out at midnight with a rose between his teeth and lands on a sled.