Laci200 Said:
Reread my post and maybe you'll understand. Inventors should get paid a certain amount fee or they will never release anything in the future. And yes who is performing protected illusions illegally that should be punished.

Response:
The problem with magic today is magicians are trying to protect Illusions such as the Origami, Death Saw, etc. that are NOT legally protected. Yet we are punished by magicians who believe with some crazy form of ethics and have no idea of history as you demonstrated. Good Post by the way!!!

That is why the Jim Passe article is so good. He states that an inventor has a choice to either protect his idea or lose it. Magicians have a responsibility to acknowledge the patent system for what it is. An examination of a claim of ownership that is compelling. Magicians want the same protection without the examination. That is why there are so many problems with the ethics issue.
Jeff Davis

Thanks for your comment Jeff. I knew you would know what I'm talking about. Magicians should ask the inventor's permission who would give them a fair price and written permission. You are one of the greatest builders as I see on your site. When the magicians go to you they should show to you their permission. If someone who goes to you and doesn't have permission you will not build for him. That is ethics. I'm talking about protected illusions. Still I don't think it is fair when the inventor chooses a builder or limited builders to build an illusion. The performer pays big money so he should decide what builder he chooses.


Quote:mark2004
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And what happens if someone comes up with a brilliant invention but decides, for reasons of their own, to never let it be used.

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Then only the inventor should perform that illusion. If you would perform that is a rip off and you should be punished. There are so many illusions what you can choose. Is it not nice to take someone else's illusion if you have not paid for it.

Isn't it an idea to register your magic inventions just like music? And then people have to pay perfomance rights when they perform an illusion which you created..?
Like a website where you can register your own inventions and people can pay rights through that site?
EVI

The system of rights you refer to already exists - it's the system of patents and copyright and other intellectual property law. The website you propose seems to fulfill the same function as organisations like the Performing Rights Society (http://www.mcps-prs-alliance.co.uk) or DACS (http://www.dacs.org.uk) - I'm sure there are American equivalents of these organisations.

I think the examples set by the music industry might be good ones for magicians to follow - perhaps magic organisations could work together to set up a company to collect rights payments.
But I stress again that the situation with performance rights for music is based around the law on copyright - which includes the fact that rights run only for a finite time. The music business (and all other creative industries and professions) seem to accept the ethics underlying intellectual property law. It continues to puzzle me why a small but vocal group here think magicians should be different.

Are you telling me that magic isn't good entertainment? And are you telling me that good entertainment doesn't improve the quality of our lives?

Now of course something like the invention of antibiotics or anti-cancer drugs will bring a much bigger and more dramatic change to people's lives. I'm not saying that any single illusion will transform the world or bring universal peace and happiness. But I do think magic is the equal of other creative arts such as music and theatre and movie making. And it is widely recognised that the world is a better place when the populace has wide access to such arts.

The point of finite limits on artistic rights is that it is widely agreed that civilised ethics say all ideas eventually become pulic domain. (The only disagreement with that ethical view seems to be from various magicians). As others have pointed out, there are various ways in which all good ideas get discovered eventually. There are many examples of where historic inventions (eg. the telephone) were being developed by more than one person independently. Consider the situation if two people are working on similar magic ideas independently of each other - both of them are genuinely creative and both are putting in effort and investment. Imagine if it is possible to register a perpetual right to an effect. Both magicians might discover the effect but the first one to register for rights can prevent the second from ever benefitting from his or her honest endeavours. Furthermore, if the first magician so decides, the majority of humanity can be denied the chance of ever seeing that effect. That is not an acceptable situation - the effect should eventually be available to wider audiences and the other inventor should have a chance to benefit from his or her efforts.
The ethical solution is that the first to the prize does get a reward - temporay control (running for the creator's lifetime plus 50 years or so if the effect can be protected by copyright or about 20 years if it's a patent situation). During that time the winning inventor gets the extra profit potential that comes form having a monopoly. After the rights expire the effect becomes public domain.

Even those who talk of infinite restrictive rights for some illusions also seem to acknowledge that there are such things as public domain illusions. Given that every illusion was devised by some human being at some point then all public domain illusions were once in a situation where they could have been proprietary. The manner of passing into public domain shouldn't be a random process based on whether and when history just loses trace of who originally had rights - it should be an equitable process that treats each case similarly. In other words there needs to be a codified system of finite rights - which is what the law provides.

Consider also the issue of "prior art". The law quite rightly says you can't patent something if it the idea is already public in some way. There are plenty of instances where people do try to grab rights to existing ideas. One very important function of patent offices is to prevent that happening by detecting when there is "prior art". Similarly courts will not uphold copyright claims if work turns out to be unoriginal. These are strengths of the legal system of rights. Conversely, a weakness of the system "rights" which Banester, Drake and others seek to apply is that there are no neutral authorities who examine and arbitrate on competing claims. We see situations where one magician claims exclusive rights to an illusion and then another argues that the effect or method existed previously. Who is to say which is correct?

All the issues I have talked about are common to all creative endeavours in some form. The ethics of all these issues have been thrashed out over decades (centuries even). The result is the current system of intellectual property law. Magic is not totally different from other creative endeavours. If magicians aren't happy with the current system of rights given by law then they need to get involved in the political debates about future changes to the law - you can't just make up your own system and bury your head in the sand, insisting that you somehow have special ethics that are better than everybody else's.

My life was completely shaped by witnessing a magician perform ... well put Mark !

Hi Mark2004

Don´t forget that the music industry can only be successful, because they do use the legal ways to protect their products.
If they would just ignore the legal ways, they could not achieve any success against piracy.
Same with magic products.
If you want to collect payments, you need to have a legal right to collect payments.
Those who ignore the possibility of protection with patents and copyrights can not follow the way of the music industry but will have to live with copies.

Dixie

Eric,

Are you serious? It is called sarcasim. But thanks for clarifying thst.

BYUDAD

Very interesting thread that I'm just now fully reading.

Jeff, you say your version predates Copperfield's, but the dates don't support that. I'm not implying you're wrong, just seeking clarification. Copperfield first performed it on television in 1988, and on your website, you write that your version was designed in the early '90s.

Also have a question for Las Vegas area magic buffs. Is the blade Copperfield used in the Death Saw on display at one of the casinos?

Put a box on a tabletop it takes the avenue of being a ripoff. The variables are the only things that separate the final product.

Ya know, I realize this thread is two years old (or older), and the links are almost all gone (expired, or in the case of YouTube, removed due to some violation or another), but I have really gotten an education. Very interesting debate.

I used to work the Copperfield show, when I was a stagehand. For three years straight. Then, I was ejected, about halfway through the third year show, when it was discovered that I am a magician. The stage manager (Jay-Stan) practically DRAGGED me into the Technical Director's office, cussing and swearing about why a magician has been allowed access to D.C.'s illusions.

I worked "Props" & "Tech", so I was given full access, and put together many of the illusions when they came off the truck. I also helped test them in a sort of "rehearsal" before the show. Never once did imagine I'd be ejected, because of my knowledge of Magic. Rules Is Rules, as they say.

David told me himself, it was a rule they HAD to follow (obviously, because of the situation you have just read). "No hard feelings, Doug", were David's last words to me. The only thing had to do was sign an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) and I left. I always wondered what the big deal was.

I understand, fully now. After all these years. Wow. What a lesson. Thank you ALL for discussing this in such detail. I will never again question D.C. and his staff for tossing me out on my behind. I'm lucky I wasn't put through a REAL Death Saw, LOL!

Doug

I won’t say ‘much’ cuz I am a bit too close to this BUT I will say this:

=1) I am a Huuuuge Fan of CREATIVITY!
=2) I am a Huuuuge Fan of Ethics & Morals “AND” The Law!
=3) I am a Huuuuge Fan of “Protection” of Intellectual Property Rights!
=4) I am a Huuuuge Fan of Applying Standards to the here-to-for mentioned “Protection”.
=5) I am a Huuuuge Fan of people “Doing The Right Thing”!
=6) I am a Huuuuge Fan of people taking RESPONSIBILITY for 1,2, 3, 4 & 5!

=7) I am NOT a huge fan of flagrant conjecture, untested theory, unfounded opinion represented as fact if it is NOT.

Thanks for listening…