talkmagic.co.uk

I am also a moderator at Magic Hat.
There is a very good system in place that ensures no copywrited tricks are allowed on the site. Let me explain it to you...
1. New members are not allowed to submit tricks, they first must contribute to the forum and prove that they are truly a magician, who is not on the site to simply learn "secrets"
2. Once a trick is submitted, us moderators will review the trick. If we feel that the trick should be accepted, we send it to the administrator who edits and accepts the trick. If we do not, we reject the trick.
You see, this is not simply a site where random people can submit tricks. There is also an access system as Morita explained.

Note the message on the home page...

We do not want this site to simply be a huge database of free magic tricks, instead we want this to be a top quality site that enables magicians, even if they have never performed a magic trick, to learn new skills and develop their hobby or profession. With your help, we can expand our tricks and maintain the high quality of our site.

Now, how about your little forum you have going here... TalkMagic, a great place for magicians to chat.

Chat? How iare you supposed to chat when other members think that you are of lower class just because you are a new member... When I first registered here I had the same problem, I was constantly being insulted. The manners of the users of this forum make me sick!

-Loki67

This whole issue about exposure is actually very tricky. In general I suppose I tend to agree with Paul Daniels. I do not want to be misunderstood. I do not know the site magichat, I they might be doing things I do not appreciate and would object strongly to.

Here is the problem – as I see it - in a nutshell:

Magician A write a general introductory book about magic he sells for £20.

Magician B creates a website that contains a lot of teaching material and offers to teach people magic for £20.

Magician A is a hero who might get a 10/10 review on TM.
Magician B is an exposer who should be kicked out the magic community without further discussion.
In my view this view is completely misleading.

Some magician X, sell what he claim to be his own trick, but in reality it is for all practical purposes an exposure of a very similar effect for which the magician can claim absolutely no credit. Just because magician X is selling the secrets does this not still make it exposure?

When me recommend beginners in mentalism to buy and read 13 steps to mentalism, we are in fact letting this beginner have direct access to the majority of principles use in mentalism. Is it exposure? Tony Corinda the author of 13 steps did not invent all effects in 13 steps, yet now one will accuse Tony Corinda of exposure.

I am pretty strict and already twice wrote pm’s to the moderators to ask to ban someone from TM because of exposure.

If one is teaching the basics of magic – whether on the internet or in a book – it is not exposure. If one is explaining for example how Derrens browns can “guess” correctly how many buttons a lady randomly pick from a jar again and again, I would protest strongly.
Teaching magic is very different from exposing magic.

While teaching magic one might explain various ways to palm a coin followed but a number of exercises. This is not exposure, since in fact anyone can go to a magic shop and learn this by paying a few pounds.

Now what if a magic shop have a stand at the local car boot sale? I think many would feel this is exposure since people NOT interested in magic, are tempted to know the secrets of various tricks. I am not sure I agree it unacceptable if a magic shop should decide to promote its product that way. It really depends one which trick are being sold.
I have no problems with the magic shop who often sells magic stuff in covent garden to the public. If they were selling Lennarts greens “Lite” and advertising it right left and center, it would be exposure.
It really about what secrets are being sold. The magic shop at covent garden where demonstrating and selling the svengali deck to the general public. It is very tricky, since part of what people are buying is the secret. But would it be acceptable if someone for £2 were selling the secret of the svengali deck on the web?

I am not saying that it’s the same or that magichat is getting it right. What I am trying to say is that the whole issue of what is exposure and what is legitimate business is a very complicated issue.

I hope you will feel welcom at TM, but I also hope (in fact what I heard so far confirms this) that magichat will take a responcible attitude towards exposure. Maybe some member at TM could have a look at magichat an maybe later write a review.

Until maybe proven otherwise, I wish you welcome to TM.

Well I have had a look at magichat, and they seem to advertise the exposure of a lot of Blaines effects ( I'm not sure if these are copyrighted or not but I would think they were ). There are also a lot of tricks that I don't know the history of ( perhaps someone more knowledgable should check it out ), but I did also spot a thread on how to make your own Raven?

I must say from my point of view the site does not do magic or magicians any favours and I can understand gunnarkrs knee jerk reaction.

As for salt, you complain about being insulted at "our little forum" and then you turn round and insult the whole membership.

Exposure is exposure, it doesn't matter wether you tell one magician or a thousand idiots who log on to youtube.

The members of this site are all magicians of some sort or other, but, and quite rightly so, exposure is banned.

But as I said this is only my opinion and I apologise if caused offence, but I must say how I feel.

The internet is about freedom of information, but not if someone owns that information. I see sites like yours in a similar vain as peer to peer, and torrent download sites.

You can rent or buy movies quite cheaply, but that doesn't make it right to give them away.

If I got a little carried away I'm sorry.

And perhaps we should be using our time here a little more constructively, instead of critisizing opinions. We state our case and leave it at that.

If everyone agreed with each other it would be a boring world.

Here's the thing. At Magic Hat we like to encourage people in the pursuit of becoming a magician. However, there's the difficult balance of nullifying exposure, while maximizing teaching.

Card trick central teaches sleights, but has no safegueard against laymen viewing secrets. There's also a site run by an excommunicated member of Magic Hat who does not protect secrets and has no qualms about exposing copywritten tricks.

Now, many tricks happen to be the compilation of of many sleights. However, sleights are often already published in one form or another. DL, Palming, the Pass, and many others.

These things are what I like to reference as a common knowledge of sorts. Pretty much all magicians know of these sleights even if they can't do them effectively. So, how do we help out these magicians to master their sleights and clean up their performance without exposing tricks to the masses?

The answer, to the best of what I've found is to test one's existent knowledge of magic, so that we know more effectively what types of tricks to allow a user to access in order to improve their performance.

Now, if you look at certain Youtube performances, you can see that their performances can be sloppy enough to reveal the most complex of tricks, even ones that are copywritten. As I see it, teaching magic helps to reduce exposure by helping one to not slop up a perfomance so terribly that they continue to reveal our secrets to a public that may not even WANT to know the secrets.

Oh, and I too am a mod of Magic Hat. I guess it's like a convention here at Talk Magic.

Salt wrote:Now, how about your little forum you have going here... TalkMagic, a great place for magicians to chat.

Chat? How iare you supposed to chat when other members think that you are of lower class just because you are a new member... When I first registered here I had the same problem, I was constantly being insulted. The manners of the users of this forum make me sick!

-Loki67

Looking at the history of the posts, I can't see any insults at all, just mention of not promoting competing forums and a subsequent polite request to remove the link from your sig. However your remarks above certainly are insulting and offensive so please don't deign to lecture TM on manners - we haven't visited MagicHat and posted such remarks so please don't do it here. As for TM being 'little', I think you'll find the statistics show a very different picture.