talkmagic.co.uk

I.D wrote:

Lady of Mystery wrote:To be honest it was exposure that got me back into magic.

If I never took that guy out and got him hammered, he wouldnt have messed up shapeshifter and 2 card monte and if so, i wouldnt be here today!!

So you're trying to tell us that you got into magic because you took a guy out for a drink, he got drunk and exposed himself to you???

Isn't that how people get into most things?

Yup

Then he showed me his magic package and I fell in love !!!

I agree with Siege on many levels and even authored a code that several writers will be using in their books starting this year; this code will allow them to track copied material to the original purchaser and take legal action against that individual. The theory of those using this technique is very simple; if we kill the root of the source then maybe we can start hurting the "file share" networks a bit when it comes to data and membership.

The thing as, after so much argument about this issue and absolutely NO ONE within our ranks admitting to either doing it or using it... well, it seems a mystery that will never be fully solved

I too have now authored a coding system which encrypts the purchaser's order number and postcode into the PDF download.

Hopefully this will not only act as a deterrent, but as Craig says, if only for my own morbid fascination, I can see exactly WHO propagated copies of the file at root level.

And, on a side note, out of sheer coincidence someone had the bright idea this morning of sending me a link to 'all Ellusionist downloads'.

And out of curiousity, I had a look. Sure enough, pages of movie and PDF downloads... all you had to do to access them is DONATE! The bloody cheek!

This is surely re-selling someone else's material without consent?

I'm angry... and shocked.

Well, I had this bad experience starting from this week actually. Last week I showed a large group of people probably a dozen card tricks with a borrowed deck. Later this week, one of my friends, who was watching, really got into magic and proceeds to perform a shapeshifter routine and some other Ellusionist tricks. After this, everytime he sees one of my tricks he starts saying...
"Oh, I know that one"
"OH that's the XXX right?"
"That XX was pretty clean"
Of course none of these tricks were bought by him, I assume he just pirated them off the net.

seige wrote:This is surely re-selling someone else's material without consent?

I'd go further and call it theft. Have you contacted Ellusionist?

There is a lot of exposure about and it makes me sick when i see something like in a flash tutorial and how to make the gaffs but i have never personally had any one say something like that. I just try to do what tomo said earlier and make the routine my own so its not reconisable but you cant do this with everything obviously. Actually last week i was doing the bip book and someone said very good but i know how to do that so i gave it to him and said go on then perform it and obviosly he made himself look like a fool because he didnt have a clue what he was talking about he admited that after he just said it to make himself look good.

Ah the secrets the secrets.


Ok magic depends on its secrets we all know that and the ol saying a "magician never reveals his tircks" Except in books or DVD to sell. I think Mark Lewis has some thoughts on this.

And I can see coming up with a great bit of magic and releasing it for sale and then only to find out it is on youtube for nowt and poorly taught can hurt.

But i agree with Craig (I often do) that exposure is needed in magic. Look at all them masked magician things got every one talking about magic etc etc and made people come up with new and better effects. Ok i dont want to see any one swindled out of a living well theres a couple but thats non magic related. Nothing remains a secret for ever its human nature (for some at least) to have an attiude of i know how thats done you must treat me like a god and i will tell you. Now for years no one knew where the MI5 building was and then some one blabed where it was didnt they.

I think exposure is healthy in a way to push magical boundries even further to devolpe new thinkings in magic.

Also if you perform you DL pass or what ever well enough the layman wont cotton on. Most people who look at youtube to learn a trick are too tight to buy the effect in the first place and are "magicians" them selves. most laymen you meet wouldnt have looked a DL up on youtube. Or have you ever done something for a spec and they say oh i know a trick and do a deal 300 piles type trick? from a small magic book?

I think its a double edged sword you got on the one hand somethin that can intrest people in magic and the other can ruin it.

Magic is almost a clossed shop, a lot of magicians dont like new magicians learning stuff I think Craig was treated a bit of a gofer and that to see the cut of his cloth when he started haning round with pros.

In a nutshell its not the end of magic its one of them things that magicians have a problem with the £oh i know how you did that" but for every 3 or 4 you probey get 20 who dont.

I have bought things from ellusionist and other sites over the past year and have noticed that they are trying to crack down on piracy and keeping exposure to a minimum. I think ellusionist has come up with the best D/L solution although its not 100% bulletproof since their tricks can be ordered on a dvd.

All their instant downloads now require a code key that is unique to every purchase. This code needs to be entered into windows media through a licensing protocol which essentially only allows that video to be viewed on that persons computer. If the file is sent to anyone else, it won't work.

But unfortunately anyone who buys any magic dvd can just rip it to their computer and have it put on some type of bit torrent program (for those not familiar with bit torrent its just something that allows you to d/l entire movies, albums and programs very quickly) for distribution.

This post reminded me of something I read a while back. Although it would most likely fix a large portion of pirating problems it would definately suck for magicians. Movie firms are trying to fight back people pirating dvd's from rental stores so they are proposing self destructing mediums. Once you watch the dvd and it is finished, the ink will change on the disc itself and be unreadable! Wouldn't be too great for those of us who like to rewind and rewatch all the time! lol

Well, I'm new to magic, but, reading some discussions on the subject of exposure, in this forum and on other places, I got a glance of what the range of the problem is, but I also got with some doubts.

First of all, sometimes I see exposure being used to name piracy of copyrighted material, sometimes I see it used to simply name the act of revealing a magic trick for free. They seem to me (but I could be wrong, of course) to be different things. Revealing a magic trick for free may be a violation to the magic ethics, but piracy is much more. It's a crime in most of the legal systems of the world.

Besides that, the knowledge of magic is very important to the art itself. One can say that magic depends 100% in the fact that the spectator doesn't know how a trick is done. However I wouldn't qualify this knowledge to be of difficult access to someone with the desire to know how a trick is done. Well, I don't know the rates, but I assume that a majority of the tricks can be learnt in non expensive books sold in regular librarys, as in amazon.com. That is something I haven't figured it out yet. There's a great concern in protecting the magic knowledge (with reason), but, in the same time, this knowledge is very available, and can't be said to be obscure or reserved to a few.

Presto wrote: There's a great concern in protecting the magic knowledge (with reason), but, in the same time, this knowledge is very available, and can't be said to be obscure or reserved to a few.

The only thing really protecting the rarity of the secrets, is most people generally not really being bothered enough to go and find out. Even when exposure was put on TV, not everyone watches it, and everything just keeps going as 'normal'. My opinion anyway.

I'll vote "yes", because there are effects that I have paid for but can't perform to various groups because of exposure.

I was talking about magic to my housemate, she talked about this guy she had seen for a short time - I think as I knew him vaguely she was trying to do me a favour, so I could perhaps talk to him about it, find a "magic buddy" etc.

But she went on to tell me (without noticing the look of chagrin on my face) that he has this special deck, so that when you do this, it does that... and the worst, because I had just bought a certain item, was that "he keeps this sort of piece of string up his sleeve all the time so he can make coins vanish... it's called something, but I can't remember what..."

Needless to say I have *not* looked him up to become best mates (to be honest, he's a prat anyway...).

I.D wrote:I had this annoying girl who started at my work a few months ago..

One day I showed a whole bunch of tricks in the pool room with great reactions... after I finished them all this new girl announced her brother 'is a magician' and went on to expose every trick I just did ( well, not teh tricks themselves.. but some really basic but neccessary concepts) .. she talked about D/L's, glides, glimpse, false transfers.. I did not know how to respond.. after she cam up to me and said that I was better than her brother and although she never noticed me doing any sleights.. she revealed what I was doing as her brother always got embarassed by people because he wasnt very good. She felt sorry for him so exposed my performances so she could tell her brother so he 'felt better' .. something to that effect

That of course, shouldnt have given her any reason to reveal what was going on at all.. she was just being spiteful.. she had read books so she knew what was going on even though she couldnt do it herself.

She left after one week. Consequently, I cant do magic at work as often anymore as every time I try to do a trick I always get ' Whats in that hand.. wait.. did you pick up 2 cards there.. let me shuffle.. etc etc

Those people that was there when she turned into miss bit** always shout over things like ' Hey, can I borrow your TT' things like that.

There are still plenty of people that started or that work in a different area of the floor that I can still perform for but quite a few people do not want to know although they admit 'Im still good'

Sorry for picking up th thread so late, but I just had to say that is just so sad! And the other ones that want to see what you have in your hand, if you d/l or whatever, ask them if they want to see miracles or magic. Makes me sad hearing such things. Mind you, I am so newbie I haven't even done any card magic for my family yet.

I.D wrote:I had this annoying girl who started at my work a few months ago..

One day I showed a whole bunch of tricks in the pool room with great reactions... after I finished them all this new girl announced her brother 'is a magician' and went on to expose every trick I just did ( well, not teh tricks themselves.. but some really basic but neccessary concepts) .. she talked about D/L's, glides, glimpse, false transfers.. I did not know how to respond.. after she cam up to me and said that I was better than her brother and although she never noticed me doing any sleights.. she revealed what I was doing as her brother always got embarassed by people because he wasnt very good. She felt sorry for him so exposed my performances so she could tell her brother so he 'felt better' .. something to that effect

That of course, shouldnt have given her any reason to reveal what was going on at all.. she was just being spiteful.. she had read books so she knew what was going on even though she couldnt do it herself.

She left after one week. Consequently, I cant do magic at work as often anymore as every time I try to do a trick I always get ' Whats in that hand.. wait.. did you pick up 2 cards there.. let me shuffle.. etc etc

Those people that was there when she turned into miss bit** always shout over things like ' Hey, can I borrow your TT' things like that.

There are still plenty of people that started or that work in a different area of the floor that I can still perform for but quite a few people do not want to know although they admit 'Im still good'

Of course, she is not the one in the wrong per se. it was her brother for showing her the mechanics of the tricks. you cannot expect lay people not reveal, it goes against human nature if you think about it. Society as we know it has grown from people within it sharing ideas and knowledge so you could say that it is more natural for us to share than not to.

Aothough annoying as this girl obviously was, she was just being a human. Her brother should have known better though.

Just my thoughts
Notting