Here's a question along the same lines. There is a card trick presented by a well known magician (his area is mostly trade shows, in the upper echelons) on a videotape. The trick easily incorporates messages that can be tailored for a client. The magician encourages the viewer to use this trick, and suggests different messages.
I have come up with an adaptation of the effect, for use in table hopping, with a birthday theme. I have changed the handling towards the end, to fit the theme.
I assume it is ethical to make the changes in technique and make the presentation. Am I correct? And when does changing an effect cross the line?
By the way, this particular trick has a distinct lineage, and the magician was very good at crediting in the video two or three predecssors whose handling he himself had improved.
kerpa
a/k/a Michael Miller
Chicago area

Interesting question.

The card trick was taken and given to muggles as a party stunt.

If I read you correctly, you salvaged the thing from it's public access/presentation source and are using it to fool muggles and not giving away the secret.

Doe this mean you want to sell your version? To magicians? To muggles?

Nope, don't want to sell it, just use it to fool the muggles as part of walk around. This trick was never given away to the public per se, but is on a very good videotape for magicians. If I mentioned the effect, you would know it, because it has become well established in many repertoires. But whenever I ask, it is used in its original version. I want to adapt it, changing it from presenting a corporate logo/message to being a birthday effect during walkaround. BTW, I recall the originator of this version of the effect had to contact the previous inventors and get their permission, which he did.
I guess what I am asking is this. When we purchase a videotape or DVD, we are, I understand, purchasing the right to present effects contained on that media to the public. But are we entitled to alter the methods and/or nature of the effect?
kerpa

Thanks for the clarification. My feeling is that when you buy something that has a solid provenance in conjuring, you are ENCOURAGED and EXPECTED to customize the thing to suit yourself.

Go for it! Bring magic to your audiences! Let the inventor know about the thing AFTER you have it all perfected to suit yourself and see where things go from there as regards selling or publishing IF YOU SO CHOOSE.

Thanks, Jonathan. I have no interest in selling or publishing this effect, which is a wonderful trick of Paul Gertner's. (There, that all but tells you what I have been referring to
kerpa

It's a pipe dream that this could ever happen.....

But let's assume it could.....

I have somewhat of a fetish for goldfish productions. It's a problem really. When I saw Penn and Teller's show, Teller did a fishbowl miser's dream that ended with a large tank fish production that was bigger in scale than anything I had ever seen on the market, or done myself.

If I set out to learn all I can from published illusion building materials, and eventually succeed in doing a 30 gallon tank sized production of seemingly 100s of goldfish with no cover, have I effectively ripped off Penn and Teller?

Of course, just traveling with the thing would be insane, considering the fish water needs that can't come straight from a municipal tap water system, and the expense is well outside my investment range right now. But as I dream and build the next level of show, who knows?

So, the idea of producing livestock is not owned by anyone. Goldfish specific productions are not, as a concept, owned. Particular methods are. If I aspire to the large, inspired by a particular performer's success in this particular area, am I on ethically shaky ground? Even if it is the grand rip-off artistes themselves? (The state of a victim is of course no justification for a new rip-off, I understand this. There's just some irony in the idea of "borrowing" from the self-proclaimed bad boy exposers.