In a recent thread, I tried to clarify the issue of what copyright is and how it works in order to eliminate some of the nonsensical arguments I have seen here in regards to magical knowledge. For the most part, the majority of people who participated in the thread understood the information and my reasons for sharing it. Unfortunately, the topic was seriously sidetracked by others who were unable to see the difference between legal issues and ethical ones.

Because of the strong feelings that questions of ethics evoke, I think that discussing matters of right and wrong is an important exercise, and one that can help us in formulating a code of behavior that protects the creators of magic while still promoting the art through education. For this reason, I will be posting a series of hypothetical situations involving questions of ethics. I encourage anyone who wants to participate to weigh in with their opinions. My only request is that, regardless of what position you take, you try to explain the reasons why you feel a certain way, and give concrete arguments in support of your position.

PLEASE NOTE: Absolutely NONE of the situations I will be posting here will involve questions of copyright infringement. DO NOT bring up copyright as an argument in support of your position. If you are unsure as to why copyright doesn't apply, please refer to the following post:

http://www.themagiccafe.com/forums/viewt......7&32

If the matter is still not clear to you, PM me and I will be happy to clarify it at greater length.

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ETHICS PROBLEM #1

Situation: Two young people are serious students of magic. Unfortunately, they have limited financial means. In order to help further their education, they decide to pool their resources, with each paying half for each book or video they purchase. They buy their material from legitimate sources, and each of them shares the material equally.

Question: Are they acting ethically?

Discuss.

If we take possesion of book as as possesion of license, who had the book has the license to use the contents. I guess that could be worked if they treated the book as the license and only worked on the material while in possesion of the book. I see this as a respectful approach that covers the study of the book. This approach could also cover performanc rights if they also agreed not to perform works from the book while not in possesion of the book.

I don't see this as any different from a private library such as one that belongs to a magic club. As long as they are working with the original copy of the book or DVD only, that's basically the same situation.

One thing that typically happens when people learn from a video or a book that they use early in their development as a magician, such as a library book or something similar is that later, when they have acquired the means to purchase their own copy of the video or book in question, they do so.

One of my early resources in magic was a book by Ottokar Fischer called Illustrated Magic. This was translated from the German by J. Barrows Mussey (AKA Henry Hay). I always thought of this as one of those rare books that nobody could ever acquire. Later, I was able to acquire not only one of the English edition, but also one of the German copies. And this started from reading a book in a library.

This was also one of the books that inspired me to translate German works into English.

I'm glad that the first two responses I received were so intelligent and considered. For the record, here's what I think.

When considering matters of ethics, I have always asked myself two questions:

1) What is the possible harm?
2) How would I feel if I were the one affected?

To answer the first question, the possible harm is the loss of a sale to the creators. However, we are talking about two potential sales vs. one actual sale. If neither boy is able to buy an item on his own, then the total purchases will be zero. On the other hand, by pooling their money, the total number of purchases is one. I think that one actual sale is better than two hypothetical sales.

To answer question two, if I were the creator of a magic book or video, I would certainly prefer one sale to no sale at all, even if that meant that people would share my work.

So, in my opinion, there is nothing wrong with what the boys have done. Hopefully, as Bill as mentenioned, they will want to acquire an individual copy at a later time, when they can afford it, but as it stands, I believe that this is an acceptable case of sharing.

Any dissenting opinions?

Is there no such thing as joint ownership?

Yes, I think so. Also, as Bill pointed out, this situation is similar to a library. In my opinion there is nothing unethical about a public library carrying magic titles.

Phaedrus, although I see nothing inherently unethical about the situation, two potential sales don't always add up to 0. Sometimes they add up to 2, and sometimes they might add up to 1, depending on some variables.

Andrei

I don't see anything unethical in this either. People have used pooling resources as a strategy to problem solve forever. If neither can afford it alone that equals no sales at all. I also think anyone willing to go to these lengths to acquire magic has a strong desire to learn, and would most likely be an asset to magic. The other aspect of this is that if you are in the same family...ie husband and wife, father and child, it just makes sense to share a copy of a book. I rarely bought anything my Dad already had. The few times I did, it just caused problems when they got mixed up, because he's totally nuts about any of his copies being moved around whereas I tend to leave mine whereever.

Beth, I have to disagree with part of your collectivist argument.

If I publish a book and demand a thousand dollars a copy, it's to keep the material exclusive and away from such as who won't make the commitment to the work.

Now where one to ask me for an exception to my price or offer a different trade we would have a different situation.

What then of the notion of collective ownership of secrets?

Question really is, where do you draw the line? If two can do this, why not five... or ten... or twenty. Now the damages are compounding.


This is only accurate if the total number of purchases they will ever make is one each. If they can do this with one book, why not two... or ten... or twenty. So now instead of one guy buying ten books and the other guy buying ten books and each having access to the ten they purchased, they each have access to the 20 collective books.

It all boils down to what one puts as the value of the material books contain. What ethical right does one have to things they can not afford?

Cheers,

Tom

Hi Jonathon. First it's an extreme and I think unlikely example. I think the situation you describe is not the most likely of scenarios to occur. The more likely scenario is a couple of teenage boys pooling allowances to buy a copy of Jay Sankeys Revolutionary Card Magic. I honestly don't think Sankey would care. The only thing I have ever looked at that would cost 1000 dollars would be like Kevin James Snow animator or an illusion, so I have to ask where the heck you're buying your books lol. It would have to be a heck of a video or book for me to pay a 1000 bucks for it let me tell you. Now I know there are collectors items you could pay 1000 bucks for, but outside of that I've never seen a magic book that cost that much. You said "If I publish a book and demand a thousand dollars a copy, it's to keep the material exclusive and away from such as who won't make the commitment to the work." But spending money and making a committment aren't the same thing. To some ppl 1000 dollars is nothing....chicken feed... to others...well it as unattainable as the stars, but having 1000 bucks to spend without it affecting your finances doesn't make you more committed to magic. It just makes you richer haha.
Peace Beth

Tom:

This is certainly one way of looking at it. However, even if each boy bought ten books, they could lend each other the books they bought, with the result that each boy has access to twenty books; the final result remains unchanged. Perhaps we could consider this a variation of the original question: is there any difference, ethically speaking, between two friends sharing joint custody of 20 books, or each boy owning 10 books and lending them to his friend?

Tom:

Sorry about the double post, but this just occurred to me:



The answer, of course, is none. But what if they CAN afford those things jointly? For example, imagine two men who can't afford a Viper on their own, but they pool their money and buy one together, agreeing to alternate the days they can drive it. As far as I know, there would be nothing illegal about such a situation. What, then, is the difference when we are talking about magic?

Two or ten or Twenty ppl have... what about the library at the Magic Castle? that's certainly more than twenty....I wonder if you see that as wrong? They have a huge collective library. Collective use of books and educational material in magic has been going on forever. Whether it's through groups like The Magic Castle, local magic groups, or a group of magicians that meet weekly to sit around a diner sharing. The idea that money makes you more worthy of knowledge in my opinion is ridiculous.
Peace Beth

Yes, what the boys are doing is ethical.

It's important to look at the problem from the balance of compensation for the creator and accessibility for the greatest number.

The council will buy books and put them in a library so less affluent people and those who read a lot may have access. This is good. This is beneicial to society and especially young people. This is why we have libraries.

If you argue agaimst the boys, you are aguing against libraries

Again, in a library tens or even hundreds of people can check out the same book. Is this unethical? Not in my opinion. Also, there are social programs (see Huricane Katrina) to help people get things they can't afford. I don't find that unethical.

I suspect that folks here have not read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged though from what has been posted, some may have read john Rawls's A Theory of Justice.

Here is a link for the Rawls position: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rawls

And another for Ms. Rand's position: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand

I will have to amend my NDA/NC on my material with a condition that the work constitutes one license for the party named in the original agreement.

Just so you know, if you want to buy a copy of the Harbin book on illusions, expect to pay a hefty sum. There are other works out there with similar price tags. Taking a cue from Ms. Rand about trade and value, I encourage you to negotiate prices as you can.

Jonathan, personally, I never thought that Rand's ideas worked in the real world, as they, like other philosophies like pacifism, require others in the larger culture to offer protections to those espousing such philosophies. Although the Rand writings often posit great persons developing mighty things, I don't think that artificial social constructs from the books, nor the heroic characters, ever had a real-world counterpart, not even among the Rand disciples.

Hmm... I never thought I'd post something like this on the Café. *laugh*

I agree that a creator should never be forced to sell a creation, nor to set a price at a particular level. However, that is the limit of what the creator can do; once the genie is out of the bottle through an outright sale, a creator has no control over the physical entity that goes out into the world.

Taking a literary tangent just for a moment... I actually laughed out loud and had to put down the book when Dagny accepted the green metal chain as symbolic of her desire to be possessed.

That said, I use Ayn Rand's work as icon for the notion that you are trading something for something and that we are well served to respect the value of things.

At most base root is a question regarding converting ones personal cognitive process into material value. In magic, I posit this is done via secrets that enable effects. The questions of what to trade for secrets, and a structure that tends to preserve the value of secrets are close to the root of commerce in our craft.

In the question posed above I suggested that IF the students respect the notion that possession of the book is license to work on material in the book, we would have a solution which preserves the intent of the author, the merchant and a sort of integrity of the students.

How then to motivate the student to respect secrets? Given that one cannot teach virtue, do we wish to shun and ostracize our ethically challenged? What carrots can we offer to encourage virtuous behavior and what sticks might we use to protect our work from those who are predatory?

That is your ethic, Beth. In its basic form you see no need for money to change hands at all in exchange for knowledge. All magic books should be free, all text books should be free. It is just knowledge. The above ethic would tell you that it is OK to steal information you can not afford because you disagree with the whole concept of paying for information. Do you see any problem with file sharing networks which include copyrighted material?

Phaedrus,

If two people share a Viper, then the person who is without said car has none of the benefit of it, except half the insurance and liabilty should his buddy crash it. If the boys share this concept and they agree to not perform any of the tricks they are not in physical posession of the books for, then I would see less wrong with this.

Sit down at a bar with a friend and ask the bar tender if you can share a beer between the two of you.

As for the discussion on libraries, folks need to read up on why there are public libraries and how they function before they use that as an example for two boys trying to get around paying for what they want.

I believe there is a VAST difference between charity or recieving something due to life threatening need, and the question of our two little boys. Not the least of which is this: either someone paid for the donations or they were freely given by the manufacturer.

Cheers,

Tom