The Lost Community
Seems that everywhere you look now days there are discussions and arguments (along with tons of denial) pertaining to “Intellectual Property” and the issue of Copyright infringement and the stupidity known as Patenting an effect (the quickest way to give away the secret). I’ve seen tremendous gains as the result of such attitudes but I’ve likewise had to juggle a moralistic dilemma when it comes to how anal retentive some have become in recent years; most of whom being the totally unknown sod that has done some form of self-publishing and thinks their stuff is gold; the copyright block in their “books” essentially barring the purchasers from sharing the information with anyone, including their spouse or show partners, without paying full price on each additional copy.
Pardon my French but, that’s pure bovine excrement in my book!
The largest and arguably most prestigious magic fraternity on the planet is the Academy of Magical Arts & Sciences a.k.a. The Magic Castle. Within its bowels is the largest library of magic related texts on the planet (according to most); books that are available to every single member of the club. You will find that many IBM & SAM groups as well as the Magic Circle in the UK are known for similar libraries; collections that contain some very coveted antique texts as well as copies of limited releases and everything from old to current.
The attitude so many have now days is duopolistic in the sense that it skirts around the library access issue to some degree, claiming that “that’s different” when in truth, we are still looking at general access by persons sharing the same passions, at no direct cost nor royalty pay out to the author. . . the same exact thing that happens when two or three guys from a given community area either swap books & videos amongst themselves or even toss money together to make a group purchase of an expensive text so the group has the information as a whole. This is not something new, magicians have done this sort of thing for generations . . . at least throughout most of the 20th century as more and more books were being printed on the topic as well as Boy Scout publications pertaining to the craft and what could be found in an amazing plethora of premiums. In short, this sacred cow attitude around magic is relatively new and almost entirely centers on one thing – GREED with a strong scoop of ego tossed in for good measure.
I tick off a lot of people when I bring this issue up because the agenda in today’s magic world is to kill off the yesteryear practice of being supportive and actually sharing and helping one another out, which included the lending, swapping and some questionable photocopying (of specific sections in a book, not the whole text). But most of us were taught when we were very young, the lessons about sharing and giving and good manners when it comes to “things”. As we moved along in life we learned about how it was our obligation to help persons that had difficulties in certain areas of study (as an example) in school because we would likely need similar assistance in other subjects. These are the morals & ethics of a society and when they begin to breakdown, regardless the excuse (a.k.a. explanations) given, one is able to see the start of a societal decay. . . lost priorities and the sense of community always serving as the spark lighting such a flame, just look at history; especially in how all the great civilizations of the past were devoured from within.
Yes, an aspect of this issue can be found throughout “society” as it exists today and with it, excuse after excuse as to why it’s “moral” and “ethical” . . . in other words, the guilty offer pseudo-logical defense for their actions. Truth is, they placate us to some degree by offering such rhetoric and yet, we know deep down inside that something just don’t “fit” . . . something is askew; that something tends to be the human element, which has been exchanged for claims of ego. The darker side of it all, lending a social-political advantage to those standing on the “upper end” of the hierarchy; after all, when they claim something as being theirs, it will be defended. . . even when it is “borrowed” from other sources. A great example of this is how Luke Jermay published a video that exploited a concept first introduced by the late Herb Dewey in “King of the Cold Readers” and yet, no mention or credit is given to the elder. While I have my doubts that Luke would betray someone in such a harsh way and I can see it as an oversight, this remains a prime example of how things frequently happen already, when some “kid” that’s essentially unknown, has their brain child usurped by a more established character. It happens and we are going to see a lot more of it happening in the decades ahead, because of how the whole Copyright/Intellectual Property game is being orchestrated.
The Art World is a great example as to where things are heading; numerous works of art credited a given “Master” are actually pieces done by one of their unknown students. It has been a tradition in this scene for centuries and we’ve already seen examples of it in the corporate world in which the actual inventors of a system or authors to a concept are nixed from the game and not given credit because all intellectual development is “property” of the parent corporation a.k.a. financial backer.
Are you seeing where things are heading, yet?
PIRACY, at least in my mind, stems from those that replicate or otherwise share other people’s work en masse i.e. the eBay sellers and Torrent Site (file share) posters and worse of all, those that plague our forums, using their “library” as a bartering tool, quietly bartering deals over and over again with the same texts or videos.
And NO, this is not the same thing as I was discussing about sharing and community. If I lend a physical book to you, it is one copy of something no longer available to me for the time of the loan. What these clowns do is use the same electronic files to work trades over and over again without mercy. Two examples of this are a billet technique known as Obsidian Oblique to which there are only 100 legal copies if I recall correctly, and Brad Henderson’s THE DANCE which I believe had a 200 copy release. Yet, you can find copies still being hawked on eBay and other less “legit” sites.
My point to all of this is a simple one; Where’s Our Community?
On one hand we have the social side of morality and ethics; that established way things have been for centuries when it comes to how a civilized culture functions. On the other hand we have the legally worded factor in which the elder tradition has been criminalize or at the very least “tainted” in a way that makes those that observe such traditions, look like crooks & traitors. . . which is ironic when we take that deeper look and see how it is the love of money that drives this latter train forward more than anything – the “need” of the author and/or publisher to pocket as much loot as is possible rather than looking at the product as the labor of love & passion such things used to be.
Don’t get me wrong, making a buck is not a bad thing and I’m very much in favor of protecting one’s cerebral children so that proper credit goes where it belongs. But that sense of ego-acknowledgement can be had without the dollar factor and so it has been for a very long time; hence the reason for trade publications such as MAGIC, Linking Rings, MUM, etc.
So how do we establish a community in which one is not being stigmatized and scorned for doing what has been a common aspect of life since the earliest of times? How do we encourage an understanding of actions that are criminal and immoral vs. those actions that are innocent and honorable?
This is something that concerns me, greatly. I loathe lost innocence at any level that affects a culture and society, but especially when the real corruption is what hides behind the veil of legitimacy and legal speak.
Seems that everywhere you look now days there are discussions and arguments (along with tons of denial) pertaining to “Intellectual Property” and the issue of Copyright infringement and the stupidity known as Patenting an effect (the quickest way to give away the secret). I’ve seen tremendous gains as the result of such attitudes but I’ve likewise had to juggle a moralistic dilemma when it comes to how anal retentive some have become in recent years; most of whom being the totally unknown sod that has done some form of self-publishing and thinks their stuff is gold; the copyright block in their “books” essentially barring the purchasers from sharing the information with anyone, including their spouse or show partners, without paying full price on each additional copy.
Pardon my French but, that’s pure bovine excrement in my book!
The largest and arguably most prestigious magic fraternity on the planet is the Academy of Magical Arts & Sciences a.k.a. The Magic Castle. Within its bowels is the largest library of magic related texts on the planet (according to most); books that are available to every single member of the club. You will find that many IBM & SAM groups as well as the Magic Circle in the UK are known for similar libraries; collections that contain some very coveted antique texts as well as copies of limited releases and everything from old to current.
The attitude so many have now days is duopolistic in the sense that it skirts around the library access issue to some degree, claiming that “that’s different” when in truth, we are still looking at general access by persons sharing the same passions, at no direct cost nor royalty pay out to the author. . . the same exact thing that happens when two or three guys from a given community area either swap books & videos amongst themselves or even toss money together to make a group purchase of an expensive text so the group has the information as a whole. This is not something new, magicians have done this sort of thing for generations . . . at least throughout most of the 20th century as more and more books were being printed on the topic as well as Boy Scout publications pertaining to the craft and what could be found in an amazing plethora of premiums. In short, this sacred cow attitude around magic is relatively new and almost entirely centers on one thing – GREED with a strong scoop of ego tossed in for good measure.
I tick off a lot of people when I bring this issue up because the agenda in today’s magic world is to kill off the yesteryear practice of being supportive and actually sharing and helping one another out, which included the lending, swapping and some questionable photocopying (of specific sections in a book, not the whole text). But most of us were taught when we were very young, the lessons about sharing and giving and good manners when it comes to “things”. As we moved along in life we learned about how it was our obligation to help persons that had difficulties in certain areas of study (as an example) in school because we would likely need similar assistance in other subjects. These are the morals & ethics of a society and when they begin to breakdown, regardless the excuse (a.k.a. explanations) given, one is able to see the start of a societal decay. . . lost priorities and the sense of community always serving as the spark lighting such a flame, just look at history; especially in how all the great civilizations of the past were devoured from within.
Yes, an aspect of this issue can be found throughout “society” as it exists today and with it, excuse after excuse as to why it’s “moral” and “ethical” . . . in other words, the guilty offer pseudo-logical defense for their actions. Truth is, they placate us to some degree by offering such rhetoric and yet, we know deep down inside that something just don’t “fit” . . . something is askew; that something tends to be the human element, which has been exchanged for claims of ego. The darker side of it all, lending a social-political advantage to those standing on the “upper end” of the hierarchy; after all, when they claim something as being theirs, it will be defended. . . even when it is “borrowed” from other sources. A great example of this is how Luke Jermay published a video that exploited a concept first introduced by the late Herb Dewey in “King of the Cold Readers” and yet, no mention or credit is given to the elder. While I have my doubts that Luke would betray someone in such a harsh way and I can see it as an oversight, this remains a prime example of how things frequently happen already, when some “kid” that’s essentially unknown, has their brain child usurped by a more established character. It happens and we are going to see a lot more of it happening in the decades ahead, because of how the whole Copyright/Intellectual Property game is being orchestrated.
The Art World is a great example as to where things are heading; numerous works of art credited a given “Master” are actually pieces done by one of their unknown students. It has been a tradition in this scene for centuries and we’ve already seen examples of it in the corporate world in which the actual inventors of a system or authors to a concept are nixed from the game and not given credit because all intellectual development is “property” of the parent corporation a.k.a. financial backer.
Are you seeing where things are heading, yet?
PIRACY, at least in my mind, stems from those that replicate or otherwise share other people’s work en masse i.e. the eBay sellers and Torrent Site (file share) posters and worse of all, those that plague our forums, using their “library” as a bartering tool, quietly bartering deals over and over again with the same texts or videos.
And NO, this is not the same thing as I was discussing about sharing and community. If I lend a physical book to you, it is one copy of something no longer available to me for the time of the loan. What these clowns do is use the same electronic files to work trades over and over again without mercy. Two examples of this are a billet technique known as Obsidian Oblique to which there are only 100 legal copies if I recall correctly, and Brad Henderson’s THE DANCE which I believe had a 200 copy release. Yet, you can find copies still being hawked on eBay and other less “legit” sites.
My point to all of this is a simple one; Where’s Our Community?
On one hand we have the social side of morality and ethics; that established way things have been for centuries when it comes to how a civilized culture functions. On the other hand we have the legally worded factor in which the elder tradition has been criminalize or at the very least “tainted” in a way that makes those that observe such traditions, look like crooks & traitors. . . which is ironic when we take that deeper look and see how it is the love of money that drives this latter train forward more than anything – the “need” of the author and/or publisher to pocket as much loot as is possible rather than looking at the product as the labor of love & passion such things used to be.
Don’t get me wrong, making a buck is not a bad thing and I’m very much in favor of protecting one’s cerebral children so that proper credit goes where it belongs. But that sense of ego-acknowledgement can be had without the dollar factor and so it has been for a very long time; hence the reason for trade publications such as MAGIC, Linking Rings, MUM, etc.
So how do we establish a community in which one is not being stigmatized and scorned for doing what has been a common aspect of life since the earliest of times? How do we encourage an understanding of actions that are criminal and immoral vs. those actions that are innocent and honorable?
This is something that concerns me, greatly. I loathe lost innocence at any level that affects a culture and society, but especially when the real corruption is what hides behind the veil of legitimacy and legal speak.
It’s just something to think about.
