On Feb 7, 2023, qkeli wrote:
Who is Scott Dressburg and where did he publish that idea please ?

On Feb 6, 2023, Consultthemind1 wrote:
A lot has happened since I have been gone!

The rabbit hole just got deeper; I contacted Scott Dressburg and got an interesting reply.

Before getting to his response, for anyone that didn't see my earlier post - I referenced a letter Scott Dressburg sent me in the 90s.

I fished out that letter and it is dated April 14th 1996, it says (copied verbatim) -

"I think I have finally finished my new effect. I call it "Little Shop of Horrors". I have been using Stuart Robson's "Horrors!" for almost five years and wanted a hook that made sense. This is gonna cost you, but it's worth it - so get your hand in those deep pockets. Go shake off the dust from your old copy of Practical Mental Effects and find Horrors. Lay the book open, take six slips of paper and look at the crib or key whatever it is called on the book's page. Copy that key but instead of copying the words, write a cheap shopping item instead. Take each of the other pieces of paper and where each word is, look at its shopping item equivalent and write the shopping item in place of the word. I know what you're thinking tedious right? Well there's more.You now have to go to the shop with those five pieces of paper, five times and buy each of the shopping items in that order from each of the pieces of paper so you have the receipt. Write the numbers into the bottom corner of the receipts as described in the book and now by following the instructions detailed in the Horrors routine you can perform a thought of shopping item trick that fits in your wallet. Tada".

There's more in the letter that is not relevant here.

After this drama unfolded it gave me the excuse to call Scott. Before I share Scott's response he has asked me to make it clear - Scott doesn't want to be involved in drama and in his own words "I am too old and haven't been in the game in such a long time that it's a distant memory to me".

Ok, onto what Scott said (not copied verbatim), but the essence of it. It was a long phone call, and most of it was not relevant. Scott was never a famous magician, he was not even what he would consider a performer. He was a member of a local magic club who table-hopped from time to time, and at his club, members were asked to do "show and tell" nights which were like mini-lectures.

Scott put together a set of ten lecture notes (that technically weren't lecture notes) titled "Little Shop of Horrors" to give to other members of the club.

Scott has agreed to send an original set of notes to Denis from Conjuring Archives for verification. Behind the scenes, I have been in contact with Denis, who has agreed to have the notes sent.

Scott wanted me to make it very clear that he doesn't want credit, he doesn't believe the idea is original to him as it seemed too much of an obvious solution and even though he printed notes and gave those notes to a limited number of people (some of which he still has the contact information for) he doesn't expect anyone to acknowledge the effect as his creation. He thought (from the outside) that this drama is fruitless because he is sure that he cannot be the only person to play with the binary principle and shopping items, he said (this is copied verbatim as it made me laugh) - "I mean come on, Robson was doing that sh*t in the 1930s".

You might wonder why I have posted the above information if Scott doesn't want to be involved.

It (to me, at least) goes to show that the idea was not original to Weber and Trono and that until we have seen Craig's Explanations, we don't know how far the plot has been moved forward. We are estimating based on feelings instead of waiting and approaching this logically based on facts.

Craig has stated openly that they likely did use the Age Card Principle with receipts, and he happily credits them. What he disagrees with is them saying this is an outright copy without seeing the explanations and how far the plot has been taken. I think we can agree that Craig didn't steal the effect from Trono and Weber because its availability was too limited to aptly be able to research. If Craig is to be done for stealing because the idea was available in a limited capacity before him, then Weber and Trono should also be catching heat as Scott also shared his idea in a limited capacity before them also.

David.

On Feb 7, 2023, Fromentum wrote:

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On Feb 7, 2023, qkeli wrote:
Who is Scott Dressburg and where did he publish that idea please ?

People really need to lear about search funktions. Just as a tip: If you press ctrl+ F on your keyboard you can search any website for specific words... If you go back just a couple of pages you will find on page 24 of this thread:

On Feb 7, 2023, Mac_Stone wrote:

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On Feb 7, 2023, Fromentum wrote:

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On Feb 7, 2023, qkeli wrote:
Who is Scott Dressburg and where did he publish that idea please ?

People really need to lear about search funktions. Just as a tip: If you press ctrl+ F on your keyboard you can search any website for specific words... If you go back just a couple of pages you will find on page 24 of this thread:

Right, but don't forget to mention the fact that this was only ever published in 10 lecture notes for members of a small magic club, since it seems that the number of circulation is vital to everyone's arguments here.

On Feb 7, 2023, 1tepa1 wrote:

This is only a problem for people who argued against the idea that the number of circulation does not matter. So the fact that it was a small publishing is only a problem for the people who are on Weber's side, not a problem for the people who think Craig has the right to publish the project. Since Craig would have had the same argument for Scott if Scott had contacted him and not Weber. So the fact that Scott published it first only takes the legs out of the claim that Weber is the creator of this trick or concept and thus he can not cancel other people from using the concept since it is not original to him.

On Feb 7, 2023, Mac_Stone wrote:

Right, but don't forget to mention the fact that this was only ever published in 10 lecture notes for members of a small magic club, since it seems that the number of circulation is vital to everyone's arguments here.

On Feb 7, 2023, 1tepa1 wrote:

Let's just be clear about the precedent you are setting here. Anyone, anywhere, that publishes even a single copy of a single page manuscript lays claim to an effect. That's all well and good if that's the precedent you want to set moving forward but lets just lay that out in green and white so we can all agree.

On Feb 7, 2023, Mac_Stone wrote:

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On Feb 7, 2023, 1tepa1 wrote:

This is only a problem for people who argued against the idea that the number of circulation does not matter. So the fact that it was a small publishing is only a problem for the people who are on Weber's side, not a problem for the people who think Craig has the right to publish the project. Since Craig would have had the same argument for Scott if Scott had contacted him and not Weber. So the fact that Scott published it first only takes the legs out of the claim that Weber is the creator of this trick or concept and thus he can not cancel other people from using the concept since it is not original to him.

That's between Scott and them, he's had well over a decade to make a claim on any of the variations Weber published in that time.

I think there's a big difference between 10 manuscripts printed for a local magic club and a project released to the magic community at wide. There are pages and pages and pages here on the Café and Genii discussing Real Secrets, big names were involved and contributed.

But never mind any of that, I've got my opinion and you have yours. Let's just be clear about the precedent you are setting here. Anyone, anywhere, that publishes even a single copy of a single page manuscript lays claim to an effect. That's all well and good if that's the precedent you want to set moving forward but lets just lay that out in green and white so we can all agree.

On Feb 7, 2023, qkeli wrote:
Who is Scott Dressburg and where did he publish that idea please ?

On Feb 7, 2023, Mac_Stone wrote:

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On Feb 7, 2023, 1tepa1 wrote:

Let's just be clear about the precedent you are setting here. Anyone, anywhere, that publishes even a single copy of a single page manuscript lays claim to an effect. That's all well and good if that's the precedent you want to set moving forward but lets just lay that out in green and white so we can all agree.

This is not a black and white issue to me. We can not say where the line is, if we think in terms of number of published items. For example we can not say that if an item is published with 500 copies, it is then to be considered as being the property of the person who published it and anyone else who publishes it is in the wrong, even it the other person came up with it independently. But if something is published 499 times, it is then not to be considered as being the property of the person who published it. We don't have these definite numbers. Without some regulatory board that will assign these arbitrary numbers, its all just up to our own feelings on the matter. If a person can prove they came up with a trick before someone else did, even if that knowledge was not available to many people, does that mean that the other person can or can not publish their own independent creation. It is a tricky thing and comes down to personal feelings on the matter. In my case, I feel like if the person who has independently put a lot of effort and time into the thing, they should be allowed to publish their idea, even if it is similar to something someone else did before. Again, there is no clear line to this, we are not dealing with concrete numeric values here that can be quantifiable. An amount of research has to be made by the creator to try to see whether their product is new or not, but not everyone has the same resources for the research in the first place so this is also problematic.

On Feb 7, 2023, 1tepa1 wrote:

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On Feb 7, 2023, Mac_Stone wrote:

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On Feb 7, 2023, 1tepa1 wrote:

Let's just be clear about the precedent you are setting here. Anyone, anywhere, that publishes even a single copy of a single page manuscript lays claim to an effect. That's all well and good if that's the precedent you want to set moving forward but lets just lay that out in green and white so we can all agree.

This is not a black and white issue to me. We can not say where the line is, if we think in terms of number of published items. For example we can not say that if an item is published with 500 copies, it is then to be considered as being the property of the person who published it and anyone else who publishes it is in the wrong, even it the other person came up with it independently. But if something is published 499 times, it is then not to be considered as being the property of the person who published it. We don't have these definite numbers. Without some regulatory board that will assign these arbitrary numbers, its all just up to our own feelings on the matter. If a person can prove they came up with a trick before someone else did, even if that knowledge was not available to many people, does that mean that the other person can or can not publish their own independent creation. It is a tricky thing and comes down to personal feelings on the matter. In my case, I feel like if the person who has independently put a lot of effort and time into the thing, they should be allowed to publish their idea, even if it is similar to something someone else did before. Again, there is no clear line to this, we are not dealing with concrete numeric values here that can be quantifiable. An amount of research has to be made by the creator to try to see whether their product is new or not, but not everyone has the same resources for the research in the first place so this is also problematic.

If we are talking about what is best for the community of magic as a whole, why limit any publication of a trick?

A more competitive market place means that the community as a whole would benefit. This is why American copyright law is the way that it is. Nobody wants to limit a theory, process, or idea to just the person who thought of it first, but rather encourage competition in the marketplace so that the consumers get the best product possible. Imagine how bad cars would be if the only person who could produce them was the first to think of them? Or washing machines, or computers?

In a market place where the person with the best product wins rather than the person who got there first, you would get better tutorials, better props, and more competitive pricing.

I'm sure there are strong counter-arguments to this that I mean completely ignorant to b/c I am not heavily involved in this industry, so I would love to read them if anybody cares to explain.

On Feb 7, 2023, TStone wrote:

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On Feb 7, 2023, qkeli wrote:
Who is Scott Dressburg and where did he publish that idea please ?

I can't find any sign of a Scott Dressburg existing anywhere. Might the surname be misspelled? The closest name I can think of is a magician/mentalist named Scott Grossberg who have performed at the Magic Castle, lectured at Magic Circle and have a few items in print.

On Feb 7, 2023, nicetodd wrote:
The most useful thing I've read in this thread is reference to Max Maven's inverse binary system. Anyone know where I can (purchase) read up on that?