Agreed about the state of things as they are. And those are negative statements. Rumors of death, lauding of "borrowed" ideas from unpublished works and betrayal of confidences IS were we are now. We could also bemoan the lauding of those who sell product to muggles and those who sell works of awkward pedigree to the magic community. We could do that, and have done that in our literature for over a hundred years. For some reason that tactic has not worked. You can still buy a chop cup without so much as a penny going to the inventor's estate. Same for the zombie and many other items.

You mentioned caring. IMHO that invokes a fundamental ethical axiom. Why should anyone care? What's in it for them? In other words, where's the carrot? We already know that those with wands have not been so effective using sticks. With the exception of Thomas Wayne who does threaten to use the stick, himself if needs be, the magic community has not protected its most fundamental property, secrets and the rights of those who create those secrets. You can find such mentioned in works dating back over a hundred years if you look.

The purpose of this hypothetical is to explore options for having a better environment. What do we need to do so those concerns you expressed will, on the whole, be less justified by prevalent actions and attitudes? What needs to change? What would need to be different?

Maybe it all started when magic became a product?
you can be *** sure that intellectual property was not much of an issue for the ancient priests who created oracles and magic temple doors and what-not.
It was serious back then. The gods could manifest physical demonstrations of their power. Exposure could result in the collapse of entire belief systems.
today it just means what? somebody is left out of pocket?
In those ancient days you would have to be one of those temple priests (and probably a high ranking one)before you learned these secrets even existed.
Today the only thing you need is money.

On topic: why should we act in an ethical manner?
do words like honour mean nothing anymore?
is it not enough for the "carrot" to be the simple knowledge that you as a magician are part of a great and ancient collective, a society built on secrets.
The Great Order Of The Closed Mouth.
The carrot is this, you have been entrusted with a secret, sometimes this secret is maybe hundreds of years old. It is a great honour (!) to be allowed to know this secret and like anyone who receives such a prize you gaurd it with your life.
Nope? You bought it online with ten other tricks, you paid for it and you can do with it what you *** well please?
When magic became a product and magicians became a "market" is when it all started going wrong. (IMHO! )

Following up upon the issue of magic stuff being for sale in the muggle market, what do you suggest?

Stop publishing instructional magic. It seems simple enough of an answer granted we are still discussing things as hypothetical. Certainly in the real world this approach isn't even close to practical. Practical schmatical right?

As far as the group the answers seem very simple
1- no
2-no - I would not associate with people that create a code of conduct then not uphold it. Why have a code to begin with?
3- quit

Perhaps dissecting why magicians would want to publish in the first place might help.

Thanks for asking some good questions Jonathan.
Cheers
JTW

I can only give you my personal answer.

I create things in magic as part of my process for working on and working out feelings or problems elsewhere. A sort of balance between the possible, the absurd, the sentimental and the practical. When I've gotten the magical result I was seeking, that thing has likely served my inner personal purpose. If it seems that it might be useful to the community, I give it out for publication. In my internal process, once I have the insight into something and have tested it to make sure it works, then unless it is something I decide to carry with me and use, I see it as a resource others might enjoy. I give it away. Things used to go to Harry Lorayne for his magazine Apocalypse, and for now they go here on the café. If the thing was inspired by a particular person or something they said in private, they get the thing. The few things I keep for myself still have meaning and purpose for me. They fit me or reflect me the way I am now, and so I do not offer those things to magicdom. That is my process and perspective on the matter.

well here is the conundrum. I asked how to protect something you create that you perform but don't want to sell.... ie someone seeing you perform, figuring out the method, and just taking it. ...and the answer I got if you perform it you are better off publishing it so that you have some copyright protection. So maybe that is one reason ppl publish.
Peace Beth

Beth:

Copyright protection would not apply in this case. Copyright protects ONLY the written and graphical representations, such as the instructions. It can establish that you did something first, but it doesn't protect it.

Here's an example, probably the best there is. In 1909, Burling Hull copyrighted a trick deck of cards. He called it "Cards Mysterious." It used a brand new principle. It was knocked off within a year, and the copyright did him no good at all. You may even have one in your box of tricks. It's called a "Svengali Deck."

When Marshall Brodien put this out as TV Magic Cards, Burling Hull was still alive, but Marshall really was in the clear on this, because the decks had been manufactured by several different companies when he made them very popular. Nevertheless, many people in the magic community took him to task over this. It didn't matter, really. There were no consequences, legally, that applied.

But publishing the routine or trick won't give you anything but a date of establishment of the routine.

And it may backfire on you.

Here's another example. How old do you think the ITR is? Sorcery Manufacturing may have manufactured the first one that most of us have seen, but there is also an example of one in a 1950's issue of the Linking Ring. It was built into a matchbox. The principle was the same, though.

If you look long and hard enough, you can usually find a predecessor to anything. But this does not mean that there is nothing new. New things happen with more frequency than most people imagine. The only thing that keeps people from reinventing the wheel is that we see so many wheels around us.

Regarding publishing:

This is a very loose term. Performance of a piece in public is one form of publishing. Before 1978, if you were a musician and you performed a piece of music in public before submitting it to the LOC for copyright protection, you had just dropped it into the public domain. To complicate this, a recording was not considered a legal example of the work. It had to be presented in a particular form. I used to make a bit of my pocket change writing "lead sheets" for people who wanted to copyright their music.

That has changed.

And there are levels of publishing. Publishing in the Linking Ring, MUM, the Magic Circular or die Magie means that the item will go out only to members of the IBM, SAM, Magic Circle or MZvD. So the item is staying in the family. Magical organizations do not consider this exposure. They consider it teaching. Genii and Magic may be more prestigious to some, but they are available to anyone who has enough money for a subscription. However, the world of magic is not large. By the time you have been in it for a couple of decades, you know many of the major players. It may not take you that long if you go to a lot of conventions.

And the longer you are in it, the more you realize that at some point, there must be instructional material to pass the torch on to the younger generation. Geoff Latta and I were discussing this at the 2004 TAOM convention. He said, "The problem with magic now, is that all the people I used to look up to are gone. Dai Vernon is gone, Slydini is gone, it's just not the same."

I told him, "Maybe it's your turn to carry the torch."

He looked at me and said, "Maybe you're right. You sit there at the roundtable, and somebody hands it to you. You say, 'What's this?' They say, 'It's your turn now.' "

So we have to figure out how to balance education and exposure.

There are systems in place, actually. There are originality trophies, special awards for new publications -- all sorts of carrots.

Jonathan may be right. Maybe we need more carrots. The sticks don't seem to be working well enough.

And we aren't supposed to hit. That's what Mom said.

Let's not forget that ethics is the philosophy of systems of moral values and obligations. In any widely accepted system, education, accessibility of information, and the developement of future generations are important moral obligations.

Ethics is not about restrictive practices for the benefit of a minority.

That's absolutely true.

The main thing is we need to know how much to give back and at what point in the development of the student to give it back. It does no good to teach a student to learn a difficult sleight all by itself, without context. It becomes meaningless.

The old way of teaching musical instruments was to start off and teach the student a few scales on the instrument. Then they would learn a tune. The new approach is just the reverse. They learn a few notes. Then they learn a tune that uses those notes. Then they learn some more notes. After a few lessons, they learn a scale. If they are playing a guitar or a piano, they will soon learn chords. But they don't start off with the Sor studies or Rachmaninoff's Second.

Magic should be the same way. There should be some easy tricks that give the student a basic grasp of one or two sleights or principles and how to apply them. Then a new sleight. Then a couple of new tricks that use it. You don't start them in with an Abbott's Buzz Saw.

but how fair is it? I mean I could watch Luna perform and publish her routine..is that ethical...It's probably legal... but it is wrong on so many basic levels. I would rather have someone clear out my bank account than steal something I created. It's like robbery of the soul.

If we were talking about plumbing or some other trade I would agree but as we talking about magic I do not.

Magic ethics is about restrictive practices for the benefit of a minority. If they were not, tell us why we can not tell everyone our secrets? The primary obligation of a magician is not to educate and make accessible the information but to keep it secret so magic can be performed for the majority. If the majority know the secrets who are can you perform magic for? Magic would not exist without secrets.

Tommy

As it happens the ethical issues are mostly among magicians who seem to want to publish what they've copied as opposed to trading value for value.

The ethics OF magic as regards muggles is very simple, muggles get to enjoy the show from where they sit on the other side of the stage as it were, not backstage and not in discussions of what goes on backstage either. Why? Simply because the things that they enjoy so much when they don't know are drastically less amusing and enjoyable when they do know. It's FOR THEIR BENEFIT. IT GIVES THEM A SAFE EXPOSURE TO THE UNKNOWN.

In magicdom... there is some work to be done formulating a means of preserving the right to NOT KNOW from those who wish to sell the ideas of others.

As Tommy mentioned above, magic depends on its secrets. Without the secret in place, it's pretty much down to choreography, mechanisms and wordplay. Impressive perhaps but not magical. The experience of magic seems a positive thing when offered for entertainment. We have Reginald Scot to thank for making that case.

Ok I read this quote and I thought it very fitting and to me it is very true of our situation with ethics and magic. Even tho he was of course speaking of deeper and greater wrongs than the transgressions we see in magic, I still think it is very fitting.
"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference. "
Elie Wiesel
Peace Beth

No. The primary obligation of the magician is to entertain people. That's it. Secrets are one of the main tools that we use to do this.

Losing the secrets interferes with our ability to do this. Unless we use that as a means of entertaining people -- such as the "Backstage" illusion, which leads them down the garden path, then turns on the sprinklers. Or the famous "spider vanish" feint.

The "false secret" has been one of the mainstays of magic for a long time.

I think the use of common sense, which seems to be uncommon in magic these days, is what is called for.

I respectfully disagree with Bill's second statement as regards the necessity of secrets. I believe that if we are to offer the experience of magic, there MUST be a secret in action in order to create the difference between what is expected and what is demonstrated.

Can anyone here imagine performing the cups and balls for an audience whose members consciously appreciates how well you hold a ball in your hand and how smoothly you can put something under a cup? Even your peer magicians, when they see a cups and balls routine will search back in their memory to compare how they saw the thing done when they were relatively clueless. Can you imagine performing for an audience that applauds starts to applaud when you put a ball in your pocket and then show the ball under the cup? Not for any effect mind you, just that they already know whats under the cups now and as far as they are concerned the routine is over and so they respond to how well you did the moves. When you lift the cups they politely admire the final loads... and they wait to see if you have some sort of additional kicker load waiting in the wings. Such is magic without secrets.

The example of "backstage" or even Ramsay's feints are based upon the premise that the audience is already comfortable being surprised and will treat this demonstration of what happens behind the scenes as somehow rewarding as were all your previous offerings. They follow along as things and people move about in what looks like a dance before a painted audience. Then comes the payoff. The audience discovers that somehow the magician pulled a fast one on them and they applaud at the sheer joy of being surprised.

That's my internal modeling of this stuff anyway. We all get to have our own models. If yours seems more accurate or useful, let us know.