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Everyone in the world assumes that everyone else is even dumber than them.

The secret is never impressive. In fact, learning it often feels like an insult to our intelligence. I liken it to the bedroom guitarists who spend all their time trying to learn complicated riffing and solos and studying music theory... but they seldom if ever play for anyone. And they...

This illustrates a point of why I distrust anyone who uses morals and ethics as an argument in place of... well, anything else.

Hence caveat emptor. Torrents make a very convenient and effective way of dealing with this issue in the marketplace.

I gagged a little at that. Unless you are Core Haim/Feldman and this is actually the late 1980's, I wouldn't recommend something that cornball. Honest advice? I'd skip the magic on this one. There's so much more you can do that would leave a better lasting impact. Marcel Proust once...

Hooks go beyond just the emotional as well. It's disingenuous to keep saying, "emotional hook" when you not only can't expand on the concept of emotions, but you don't know that there are other types of hooks in the first place. If the emotional hook was the only kind, we wouldn't need...

But can any of them take a kick right square in the balls and keep fighting without slowing down? Anyone who can do that is a hero to me. And that's not even counting the part where after shrugging off a steel-toed blow to the nards he proceeds to then break swords against his abs. That's the...

This is one of the infuriating things about humans. We think we're so damn special that there is no way to quantify us in concepts that we believe to be ephemeral. We have books about everything. Archery, surfing, biochemistry, black holes, motorcycles, cooking, urban legends, mythology...

As far as I'm concerned, that's the closest we're going to get to superpowers until science starts returning my calls about finding a way to create The League of True Metal Warriors.

If you're only stream of revenue is selling DVDs of stuff you made up, you have bigger problems. There's a bit of a catch 22 to the trailers as well. I call it the Sinful Doctrine. When Wayne Houchin released Sinful, he showed an uncut preview of the entire effect from start to finish...

Since no one else is going to say it I'm going to back this. Eugene Burger has a rather compelling DVD out called Exploring Magical Presentations. Kenton Knepper's Mystery by Association is also one of my personal favorites.

It's possible. Part of it is experimentation. My book Exalt of the Weird is coming out later this month. Taking a leaf from Amazon dot com, I'm going to publish the table of contents on the site and offer anyone who sends me an email a PDF of one of the chapters. If they like what they...

Someone out there always has to bite the bullet for the greater good. To reference the earlier example of the video game industry, I see more game torrents than ever before. Tech savvy gamers buy the software, find a way to remove the DRM, then torrent the game with full instructions on how...

Now we're getting somewhere. We have a situation where information technology is now so advanced that quality control is nigh impossible. This requires an expansion of the shareware principle and new commercial paradigms in order to survive long-term in this market. My own company is...

Perhaps it's an objection to a system they don't want to support. For all the bad mouthing of the pirate community, a lot of them are banding together because they don't like the idea of having their wallets raped every time they want to be entertained. I haven't set foot in an FYE since...

And yet... here you are.

We have a winner! Is that the only motivation you can think of? You're on to something. Part of the issue is respect, and part of it is adhering to a rigidly unchanging business model. The dynamics of commerce are rapidly changing in the modern world thanks to the Age of Information...

So if torrenting occurs because of a lack of wealth, could not a case be made for leniency sometimes? And is that the only reason why people use torrents? The implication being that people who use torrents do not study. Ever. Do you torrent the movies? If yes, then doesn't it strike you...

But where does it start? What causes it in the first place?

That is entirely irrelevant to the point I'm trying to make. You're all still stuck on the effect, instead of the cause. Piracy is going to continue because the number of magicians who actually stop and consider why this goes on are in the extreme minority. Until more of us shape up and...