talkmagic.co.uk

Robbie wrote:

BigShot wrote:

Ted wrote:

Robbie wrote:They're no more likely to go hunting up your book than I am to search for the latest tome on arc welding.

And now you have no need to (link here). Does that count as exposure?

Nah, not even close.

It's only exposure if someone does it without charging money for the instructions.

Oh, you mean like this?

Exactly! Now that is exposure and it harms the welder's art and the people who make a living out of welding and teaching to weld.

Scorn!

Tomo wrote:

spooneythegoon wrote:

.robb. wrote:I don't have any answers for you but I do like what Jon Thompson put on the "cover" of Poker Faced:

"If you did not pay for this PDF, you are a criminal of the worst kind; a foul parasite on creativity. You took my work just because you wanted it. I wish you nothing less than a life filled with pain and failure, and ending early with a lingering, agonizing death."

Unfortunately, he also wishes this to anyone who reads the preveiw before buying, apparently!

Oh dear me no. I merely own your soul in perpetuity if you read the preview

Umm yeah, about that... Look a monkey! *Runs away, leaving a stack of LOOK AT MY HUMMER CARD HELP THREAD IN THE SUPPORT AND TIPS FORUM! flyer's behind*

im going to put out a mentalism book in braille, but also with lots of diagrams and photos....

IAIN wrote:im going to put out a mentalism book in braille, but also with lots of diagrams and photos....

Knowing you it'll double as interactive porn.

it's all in the spine...

Welding is a bad example.

I do various types of welding and am only too happy to spread the knowledge around for free. The more the merrier if you ask me and most welders would agree. It just boils down to whether I have the time.

It's more a case of putting that knowledge in the wrong hands where there is any issue. They can really get themselves into a whole heap of trouble if they don't know what they are doing.

Watching a bad magician mess up on the other hand...

gillows wrote:Watching a bad magician mess up on the other hand...

You just reminded me of something I read last night:

Q: Who is your favorite performer to watch?
A: I love to watch BAD magic. When people think they are good but they suck. It just does not get any better. I could name names, but I am sure a few of you will read this.

That's from the Q&A part of Chris Kenner's artist page over on the Theory11 website.
http://www.theory11.com/artists/ChrisKenner.php

Made me chuckle anyway.

gillows wrote:Welding is a bad example.

I do various types of welding and am only too happy to spread the knowledge around for free. The more the merrier if you ask me and most welders would agree. It just boils down to whether I have the time.

Well, I did compare it to me looking for books on welding. Which I'm not likely to do... although I just did it, didn't I? Oops.

I picked welding because of a half-remembered quotation from the late and very dear Frank Muir: "I am to [something] what Dame Margot Fonteyn is to arc welding." Can't find the exact words on Google, and can't physically get at my Frank books.

I raised this topic to protect it from EVERY member of the general public.


For example; lets say that in 10 years time I invent a mentalism prediction that looks TOTALLY perfect... its a large bit of paper sealed in a glass jar in times square, that opened by a participant and it reads NEXT WEEKS headlines or something... (don't ask me how I'd do that, its an example)

Now imagine there are lots of press there. If even just one of those press could find out how I was doing it, the story would loose a lot of power and publicity.

With the internet, secrets are hard to keep. And when I published (finally) my method, to a select few magicians, so that once I died (all hypothetically) the secret could remain... I want it to remain a closely guarded secret.


Morbid or what


Tom
xx

For that dilemma there's a simple solution.
Make a will.

Choose your select few magicians, write them each an explanation of your method and have it locked away. Put a condition in your will that they are each to get the envelope addressed to them and include whatever instructions re: sharing the trick you feel are necessary.

That way you make sure the effect won't die with you, and if someone does expose it, deliberately or through negligence, you'll be beyond caring.

In the past year, I've issued a number of DMCA takedown notices to web sites such as Scribd to have my material removed. One guy actually scanned every single page of Naked Mentalism and uploaded them one by one. I still don't understand what the hell he did that for, but it was removed within 12 hours.

I have also published the full names and addresses of several freetards whose copies of Naked Mentalism have been found online bearing their unique passwords (morons!) on the forums where they play. Incredibly, they didn't seem to think that entering into a legal agreement whereby this would happen if they gave away my material would actually come into effect. They were sorely wrong. You hit me, I hit you back a LOT harder. I've also had to deal with a freetard closer to home, who amongst other things was trying clumsily to steal my work, but I'm sure you've all read about that and had a good chuckle here and there.

What I've learned over the past few years is that online piracy is endemic and that you never know who's going to rip you off. There's a huge strata of people who have grown up with the free for all attitude of the early web and see nothing wrong with denying me part of my income.

I've come to expect that my products each have a half life, but what's surprising is that after a while, new groups of people discover my site and buy like crazy on the recommendation of people they know. That's the strength in being relatively unknown. Enough of the right people buy, and not enough of the freetards know about me. It's exactly what I intended to get from the concept of viral marketing.

Piracy has also spurred my move into hardware. It's not very easy to rip off a gimmick, but you just try reading a microcontroller for its secret software. Mine are all programmed to only accept the erase command to reset the bit that allows them to have their software read, so you can only read an empty chip. Neat, huh?

Tomo wrote:One guy actually scanned every single page of Naked Mentalism and uploaded them one by one. I still don't understand what the hell he did that for.

That's nothing. I've seen a full scanned version of Card College on offer. All five volumes. Lord only knows how long that took, and just to gain some kudos among other jerkfaces.

Robbie wrote:That's nothing. I've seen a full scanned version of Card College on offer. All five volumes. Lord only knows how long that took, and just to gain some kudos among other jerkfaces.

I get a REAL kick form negating all that hard work. I doubt they'll see it as payback for trying to destroy all MY hard work, though.

Why do people even bother doing it? Whats in it for them?

Nothing will stop piracy. It's now a fact of life I'm afraid to say. At some point, I think a very high percentage of people have swopped something at some time in their life. I did with Spectrum games as an example. Small time publishers trying to make money. There was I copying and swopping with my friends at school.

Tape-to-tape. Ah, the good old days. Now it's P2P though. And far more likely to hurt smaller developers of "new things", purely because every bu**er has access to the internet. When I shared games it was between myself and up to three others. Now it's hundreds of thousands, millions potentially. Shame.