I watched the video and I pretty much agree with you.
I think Rick Lax is leaning towards a kind of "magic" directed just for the laypeople of the social media. He is aiming for the views, the likes and he's not trying to create something more elaborate that would improve the art of magic.
And I respect that aim, I don't like his videos but other people do and that's ok. What I don't like is his attitude towards the others: calling out ellusionist was very childish while the members of the team, especially Brad, handled this professionally and in a more mature way. And it looks like (but I'm not sure about it) that he is creating some fans who are following his steps trying to support him by any means.
I have a few questions still remaining:
is copying his videos legally wrong?
Also his videos are not really original. Did the "theft" videos really copy every single word he said?
Did Justin Flom, Bizzaro, Kyle Marlett say anything about this?
PS. A suggestion for the video: Next time record it horizontally.
I agree with everything you just said. While Rick Lax's videos are not my cup of tea, I do appreciate how he is able to entertain a mass audience that would have no prior interest in viewing magic. With that being said he is way out of line with how he is handling his influence and fame. I'll admit that I was originally upset with Calen's Instagram post calling out Rick Lax (this was prior to me doing research) because I felt like he was polarizing and alienating some of his fanbase. Then I did some research on Rick Lax's personal Facebook and I ended up sympathizing with Calen more. But yes, Ellusionist handled this very professionally and I really can't fault them here. I thought it was odd that they put up Lasse Burholt's video but I truly believe they had no ill will towards Rick Lax and his popularity.
To answer a few of your questions, copying videos is such a tricky subject since it's not black and white. You have people on Facebook like SoFlo that will steal an entire video, give no credit to the original creator, and make a profit off it and it is still perfectly legal for him to do so under a creative commons clause. What Lasse Burholt did was to even less of a degree than that, he just simply copied the idea from Rick Lax's video and made his own. This is legal since Lax did not copyright the script to it as far as I know. I honestly have no idea how he was able to get Lasse Burholt in trouble. His video is still up on YouTube but the suprising thing to me was his video only has 225,000 views not 200,000,000 as Lax stated and he he only has 415 subscribers. Not defending what Lasse did here but he really was not affecting Rick Lax's popularity at all and was more of a waste of time for Lax to even go after him. Plus this was not Lax's creation! This plot and number guessing concept has been done numerous times before Lax even posted the video.
Justin Flom, Bizzaro, and Kyle Marlett have not given a response to this as of yet and I doubt they will. I'm sure they believe what I believe and that this is just a phase in Rick Lax's life as a result of his instant fame and it will blow over soon and everything will go back to normal. In the meantime, they don't want to polarize and alienate themselves from the rest of the industry so they will probably neither lend their support nor condemnation of Lax, Calen, or Ellusionist. They are going to just keep doing what they do best and that is entertaining people.
I sincerely apologize about the video. I attempted to film it horizontally originally but due to not having a tripod and lighting issues, it was very hard for me to rest my phone up against something. When I had found a good spot, my dresser has an elevated edge so a wooden edge took up half of the shot and it looked even worse than had I done it vertically. So I decided to pick the lesser of the two evils and film it vertically so it would get rid of the wooden edge. This is also why it's so hard for me to put live performances up since it's difficult for me to film myself and I need someone else to film for me. Alas, I'm working on it and my future videos should look better. Thanks for the support!