talkmagic.co.uk

A friend of mine just stopped by and gave me CD.
On this disc were 60 movies from Penguin Magic with the explanations of tricks and effects. He said he had lots more, but only 60 fitted on the CD.

I believe you can only get these movies when you buy a trick from them as extra support for the trick you bought.

A lot of 'secret' information is out there ready for anyone to grab and i think that is wrong. Not that there is anything to do about it, you can't control what is out there on sharing programs.

I am not writing this to encourage anyone to download these files as it is just stealing the tricks, but i was interested in how the rest of the magicians think about this. If any of the moderators think this will encourage people to start downloading, then please remove this topic for me.

I will also send an e-mail to Penguin Magic to let them know about this, in case they didn't know it already.

Hi Bundy

I for one agree that you should contact Penguin and let them know. Having used their site myself, the video clips are put onto a server for you to view with your own password and unless you give your password out to others, they should be secure.

This sort of behavious in selling CD's of secrets will only devalue our art by exposing magic to the masses who don't want to learn and only want to know how things are done.

Well, that's the result of internet. There's nothing much anyone can do with this. Once you have something on your computer, it's be out there. It's a result of PM themself choosing to distribute their magic the way they do. They consider to encode their movies instead, with licence software. Of course, that might as well be decoded, but it's alot harder to do, for a lay-computer-man.

Yes it sucks that the info gets out - but you can't blame Penguin for it. That's like blaming the bank for a robbery simply because they kept the money in the building.

I'm sure Penguin has safeguards to prevent theft, but just like everything else - there's always someone out there with the determination and skill to steal it.

but you can't blame Penguin for it

It's not their fault. My friend downloaded them. All users can choose what they want to share and what not. Since you need a password to view the movies (which you only get when you buy the trick) the original spreader of the files is probably someone who bought the tricks. Once a movie is placed on sharing programs, its spreads like crazy.

They consider to encode their movies instead, with licence software

I think they really should do that. Adding licences to the movies would prevent people who download the movies to view them.

I also got a short response from Penguin Magic:

Dear Alan,
Thank you very much for bringing this to our attention. It is much
appreciated.

Best,
Kevin
Penguin Magic

So maybe they will do something about it by finding a better protection for their movies. People who know how a trick works will not buy it, so they also loose profit this way.

dat, you said that selling magic will "devalue our art" but surly if magicians sell magic (especially to other magicians), it should hurt. This statement would degrade places like Penguin that sell to all folk.

I agree that the download of this sort of Material from a P2P service is becomming an issue ... just scouted round on the net, found LOADS of penguin magic stuff on most of the services, also found some sitting on Bittorent which is meant to be moderated for copyright infringement ... I will also contact Penguin Magic as there are a few things they can do to stop this sort of things happening ... which wouldn't involve encoding the videos at source.

I mean ... if they start encoding all the material now ... the old stuff will still be present for a LONG time to come ... so they can back track a bit by posting empty files themselves .. as these bleed round the P2P networks it will become harder for people to download a working version of the videos.

Rob

I didn't mean it like that Blade Master.

What I actually said was that selling this sort of CD (one that is full of pirated material such as magic tricks) is damaging as they are usually sold to lay people who only want to find out how a trick is done. They're damaging as when you stand up at your next performance and some snotty little herbert shouts out "I know how that's done", then you're stuffed and have spent your good money to be stuffed.

Also, those selling have no right to the material and if the inventors are hit by this practice then many will consider packing up and not producing new material for commercial sale. We've seen examples of this before!

Surely this is devaluing what we do as magicians? I don't see that my statement devalues Penguin or any other magic retailer for that matter.

Where can I get this CD? j/k

dat8962 - "They're damaging as when you stand up at your next performance and some snotty little herbert shouts out "I know how that's done", then you're stuffed and have spent your good money to be stuffed. "

I totally agree!

rcarlsen wrote:They consider to encode their movies instead, with licence software. Of course, that might as well be decoded, but it's alot harder to do, for a lay-computer-man.

Encoding videos does nothing. There is always someone who can take it off. The fact that it's harder for lay-computer-men means nothing, unfortunately. Because ultimately they will not have to do it. It only takes one person to decode it, then THAT version will be the one which spreads. Look at games, look at movies. People don't decode them for themselves, they download the work of the piracy groups. =o/

~Sym~

You can't stop pirating. It's not just Penguin stuff my friend. I've seen full movies including darryls card sleights and jay stankey's titles available for download. Some might argue that it allows them to preview the title to make sure there not wasteing money on a crappy video, but how many would really go buy it once they had the ripp. Nothing stops someone from ripping them as soon as they pop'em out of the case. Trying to stop it almost seems like a waste of time, i don't think there's much you can do apart from staying away from it and not downloading, hopeing you can lead by example.

Cheers.

Big Slick is right ... the piracy communities and P2P software rely on people sharing it ... speads like wild fire ... best approach from our point of view is to just leave it alone and not download it.

Rob