talkmagic.co.uk

Hey,

So I'm a web developer... and magician Best of both nerdy worlds

I've been wanting to do this for a while now but haven't had the friends or budget to make it happen...

A lot of you will know ellusionist but they charge pretty pricey prices and make it EXTRA tough to get your stuff on the site without having to go through a million pieces..

My new service would offer a way that hasn't really been done before.

People would sign-up to the site, as either a buyer/seller/both and be able to upload content (mp4 files, pdf's etc) and we will take them, review and make sure they can't be torrented (as this is a pretty big problem with magic DVDs etc).

I'd like to see if any magicians would be interested (in the start) to work with me to make a few DVD's/PDF's

I can record (but only in the West Midlands area) or at various Conventions i'll be attending...

I like street magic style and have done plenty of this sort of thing before.

Regards,
Charlie

email: - charrielong@hushmail.com

Hi Charlie,

You may like to provide some details of previous sites/marketing expriences etc., so that folk here can see where you're aiming.

I see you're only 16 at the moment, which I'd have though is a little young to have too much experience in this area, but I applaud your ambition, and hope you're able to make a go of it

This sounds a lot like The Wire, which Theory 11 does. Think iTunes for Magic.

The one issue they've had is making sure that the items for sale are not only of a decent quality, but also happens to be vaguely unique. I'm sure they had problems with one magician releasing an existing effect that pretty much was a carbon copy of an existing technique with no real crediting, permission etc, and even then they have this team of people that check effects to pass muster, and it passed them!
You're gonna need to find that crack team of magic fans whom can identify existing tricks to avoid this sort of issue occurring.

It may sound like Theory 11's The Wire, but it could be done a different way and still be successful. I wish the best to you in your endeavours and hope that you don't do the whole "Underground Knowledge" style thing...

On the magic/website thing (which I admit to slowly going towards), I do wonder why so many magicians have such horrible designs, and why they can't shell a tiny bit of cash for a decent site.

magicrob wrote:Hi Charlie,

You may like to provide some details of previous sites/marketing expriences etc., so that folk here can see where you're aiming.

I see you're only 16 at the moment, which I'd have though is a little young to have too much experience in this area, but I applaud your ambition, and hope you're able to make a go of it

Hey,

I'm working on my personal site but have college work/exams interfering with everything

Though I have a few videos on YT under http://www.youtube.com/user/VertigoProductions1

From previous video creation, though i didn't work on marketing them properly

I like the idea but I think you'll have a lot of work to do to ensure originality and quality. The last thing that you'll want it to be known as one of those sites that peddles sub-standard or ripped off material. I actually thought about doing something very similar a couple of years ago but decided that it just wouldn't be worth it when I started to think about all the issues that I'd have to think about.

Don't let me put you off though, if you can commit the time to it and ensure the quality of what you're selling then I'm sure you can make it work.

Lady of Mystery wrote:I like the idea but I think you'll have a lot of work to do to ensure originality and quality. The last thing that you'll want it to be known as one of those sites that peddles sub-standard or ripped off material. I actually thought about doing something very similar a couple of years ago but decided that it just wouldn't be worth it when I started to think about all the issues that I'd have to think about.

Don't let me put you off though, if you can commit the time to it and ensure the quality of what you're selling then I'm sure you can make it work.

Well I can make the website design/use good and have coding friends that can help... but i was thinking of starting off by selling a few custom things and there would be NO download, it would be like watching a youtube video but on the website and you wouldn't be able to rip the video from the page.
Also i can make it so people can't copy and paste ANY of the reading materials from the page.

I'd be looking to get some medium-known people and offer royalties and maybe some free work for them, I do graphic design as well but am still getting my hand around the adobe products though i know Ade from Monster Creations and I'm sure he'd love to help me out

CharlieFox wrote: and you wouldn't be able to rip the video from the page.

Unfortunately they would. But good luck with your venture mate.

Hi Charles,

What are you doing to stop people cutting and pasting?

I'm checking that you are not going to Cufon it or just disable right click as both are open to cut and paste. If you plan to embed the PDF in flash and then have code in there to only allow it to load if on your server, that isn't secure either as it just takes a Flash Decompiler to get it out.

Just curious. I really don't have the time, resources or inclination to make my own store.

Charlie,
If you genuinely have an effective way to stop digital material being copied and published on torrents then may I suggest you will make a *lot* more money selling your idea to the music/film/software industries than by putting together a magic website
Cheers,
T.

DaveM wrote:Hi Charles,

What are you doing to stop people cutting and pasting?

I'm checking that you are not going to Cufon it or just disable right click as both are open to cut and paste. If you plan to embed the PDF in flash and then have code in there to only allow it to load if on your server, that isn't secure either as it just takes a Flash Decompiler to get it out.

Just curious. I really don't have the time, resources or inclination to make my own store.

It's a form of HTML/JS you know HTML/JS Coding?

I did the site: wowschools.com < the main site is just a edited template but once you buy the product it puts you into 7 step pages which are all unable to copy and paste.

Disable right click, and copy and paste.

My coding friend showed it to me, here's the code:

Code: Select all

======
<html>
<head>
<script language="javascript">

function setClipBoardData(){
setInterval("window.clipboardData.setData('text','')",20);
}
function blockError(){
window.location.reload(true);
return true;
}

</script>
</head>

<body onload="setClipBoardData();">
YOU TRY TO COPY AND PASTE THIS SCREEN, AND ALL THE ACTIVE SCREENS

</body>

</html>
======

Also the way the video's cannot be ripped is good, though a screen recorder can record the video clips but it will be VERY poor quality as I'm going to disallow full screen when running recording programs < that's not to hard either but it's not just HTML/JS anymore

Although a neat trick, bypassing that type of Javascript protection is as trivial as telling your web browser to View Source or you can save the webpage to disk and open it in a text editor.

With streaming, the video content always ends up on the disk somewhere, which is why it's very easy to copy YouTube videos without even bothering with those YouTube downloader applications.

I don't mean to discourage you, but copy protection is incredibly hard and the multi-billion dollar/pound businesses that feel they need it most have still not managed to solve the problem. Hence it's easy to rip CDs, DVDs, streaming content etc.

T.

Ted wrote:Although a neat trick, bypassing that type of Javascript protection is as trivial as telling your web browser to View Source or you can save the webpage to disk and open it in a text editor.

With streaming, the video content always ends up on the disk somewhere, which is why it's very easy to copy YouTube videos without even bothering with those YouTube downloader applications.

I don't mean to discourage you, but copy protection is incredibly hard and the multi-billion dollar/pound businesses that feel they need it most have still not managed to solve the problem. Hence it's easy to rip CDs, DVDs, streaming content etc.

T.

Yes it is easy to copy to text editor but when we fill the lines with meaningless code which they can't sort through per line it will soon put them off, or on the other hand we can have a encrypted text with a decryptor linked via the site which is forbidden to anyone who tries to access it.

and... The video problem can be sorted out pretty easily, tunnel each of the videos through multiple hosts meaning they would have to grab the actual file from multiple places to make the whole clip, resulting in a longer loading time (not to much longer) but a damn tough time to get the video itself... I've done this kind of thing before

CharlieFox wrote:It's a form of HTML/JS you know HTML/JS Coding?

I did the site: wowschools.com < the main site is just a edited template but once you buy the product it puts you into 7 step pages which are all unable to copy and paste.

Disable right click, and copy and paste.

My coding friend showed it to me, here's the code...

Hi Charlie,

I'm afraid that is far from secure. For laymen alone, it it's not difficult to figure out that they can 'View Source' to cut and paste, save as HTML or do a screen grab. Then for technical folk, they can simply disable or alter the JS on the page via browser extensions or settings (depending on the browser).

If a person knows how to put up a torrent, they will easily be able to figure out one of the above methods to get at the contents of a page.

CharlieFox wrote:Yes it is easy to copy to text editor but when we fill the lines with meaningless code which they can't sort through per line it will soon put them off

Security through obscurity doesn't work. I don't want to discourage you, though. Evolve it further.

CharlieFox wrote:and... The video problem can be sorted out pretty easily, tunnel each of the videos through multiple hosts meaning they would have to grab the actual file from multiple places to make the whole clip, resulting in a longer loading time (not to much longer) but a damn tough time to get the video itself... I've done this kind of thing before

It doesn't matter how you route the files, or parts of the file. It ends up in the user's computer's memory, either in one piece or in consecutive pieces. From there it can be extracted.