Open Source Magic

[YenmanMAP]

Okay so.

I know many of you have been as annoyed as I have been at the amount for exposure going on on the Internet. Tricks that are the result of hard work by magicians are revealed on YouTube as soon as they come out, resulting in not only a loss of revenue for the creator, but also a bunch of frankly terrible performances of YouTube-learned tricks.

However, I understand. You are new in magic and you are on limited funds and you have an insatiable desire for learning.

At the same time we have the young magicians who come up with a trick and want to SELL IT RIGHT NOW!!!!! without putting in the time or having the experience to have the trick be worthy of release.

Well.

I propose that the simplest solution for this is a wiki.

Anyway, the purpose of this wiki would be to provide high quality free tutorials by bringing together the magicians who just keep creating tricks and the magicians who just need more tricks. An unfinished or unpolished trick could be placed on the wiki and suggestions and edits by other magicians made, so that the trick is turned into a polished masterpiece by community effort. At the same time, copyright violations created by revealing moves which you do not own would be removed by the people with consciences, meaning that all work would be original and thus propel the art into new areas of thought. All work posted would be under a creative commons licence, meaning it is legal to give away free, but not legal for someone else to get rich off of your idea.

So if you had an unfinished trick that you would like some help perfecting, or you were knowledgeable and wanted to help perfect tricks, or you just wanted some free tutorials, you could get them without infringing on copyrights.

What do others think of the idea?

 

[OneCardWonder]

You can't copyright a trick. That's the biggest incorrect idea in magic. You can copyright text or video, but not a trick.

The only weapon against exposure is respect and secrecy. I could go out and smash a tutorial for something tomorrow and claim I came up with independently and didn't realize it was a trick and there's no legal way of stopping me.

I hate the idea personally. It's as bad as YouTube. Any Magician worth their salt would be producing good tricks and not need it, and would ask their circle of friends their opinion of a trick, and it would just become a bunch of 13 year olds with no actual paid performance experience mentally masturbating over their 1337 skillz.

The fact is I can write a book on magic and copyright it, but I can't copyright a method, a process or anything of that nature. I'd have to patent that, and it would have to produce something other than pure entertainment, which magic doesn't do.

There is no common right issue, and the issue isn't someone getting rich off someone else's, or an old already published idea -coughs advocate coughs- most of the time, the issue is lay people knowing how tricks are done, and nothing you have done there solves that problem. Nor does it solve the problem of poor performances.

 

[tally-ho]

You can't copyright a trick. That's the biggest incorrect idea in magic. You can coyright text or video, but not a trick.

I believe mystifier1 copyrighted his walk threw fence. sorry i had to say that.

The only weapon against exposure is respect and secrecy. I could go out and smash a tutorial for something tomorrow and claim I came up with independently and didn't realize it was a trick and there's no legal way of stopping me.

very true. i agree with you.

 

[aJohnson]

I personally think Youtube should be just be able to delete videos which expose tricks, that would solve most of the problems there.

 

[tally-ho]

I personally think Youtube should be just be able to delete videos which expose tricks, that would solve most of the problems there.

you can now. go to flag video, select infringes my copyright.

 

[OneCardWonder]

You cannot copyright a trick. You can only copyright written word, video images, other images, etc. You can't copyright a routine on stage, or a way of performing something, which is what a magic trick amounts to.

(Otherwise you'd have some joker copyrighting a performance of Hamlet.)

The fact is there is no legal protection afforded to magic, which is why secrecy and respect are the cornerstones of the community, and why this wiki idea is just a joke.

Good luck reporting you tube tutorials for copyright, lol. They won't do anything, unless its a rip of an actual dVD that is copyright.

 

[tally-ho]

Good luck reporting you tube tutorials for copyright, lol. They won't do anything, unless its a rip of an actual dVD that is copyright.

it's youtube. they don't know that magic is not copyrighted. I've actually reported several, and they have all been removed.

 

[OneCardWonder]

Well if it works, then I'm extremely pleased about it, but understand that there is no legal requirement for Youtube to remove them.

 

[MagicShadow9]

You can copyright the actual video or dvd. You can patent gimmicks too. But you can't copyright a method, which is what sucks about exposure.

 

[OneCardWonder]

My point exactly

 

[YenmanMAP]

I know you cannot copyright a method, which is why I came up with this solution. A creative commons license is respected not because of legal clout, it has none. A creative commons license is respected due to simple respect.

Also I think people misunderstand the exposure problem. The exposure problem is not that laymen have acess to magical techniques. The exposure problem is that other magicians have acess to copyrighted magical techniques for free. Simply encuraging the use of only open source material in free tutorials can solve that problem, and a wiki is the best way to quickly create a body of open source material. At the same time it will give an outlet for creativity where a rough idea can be polished by a knowlagable community instead of being published as more bad magic.