Wired Opinion | Wired.com: I created a magic trick with a balloon. You stretch out the balloon’s nozzle, rip it off, and then magically reattach it as the balloon deflates. No secret props, no extra pieces: just one balloon. I spent months developing this trick, perfecting the psychology and the physiology. Then I spent weeks filming and editing the trick with magic distributor Theory11.com. We released “Detach” in February of 2012.
Some company in Russia copied it a couple months later. But they didn’t just copy my trick — move for move, beat for beat — they copied the look and feel of the marketing in the trailer, too. [You can see for yourself by comparing those two links.]
In the field of magic, theft is rampant. Close-up magic wholesalers steal from close-up magic wholesalers. Parlor manipulators steal from parlor manipulators. Large-scale illusionists steal from large-scale illusionists.
Why do they do it? Because they can.
3 comments:
This certainly is interesting, as it does help shed some light on the rampant theft in all aspects of life, and how some people thrive off the success of others. In a business such as magic, a patent does not seem practical, however it should be a reality as the protection of one's creation should be a legitimate possibility, yet it seems out of reach to us now. As proven by David Copperfield's point, US law is not very good at protecting things such as this, where as foreign law is much more efficient and practical for matters such as this. Hopefully in the near future this can be changed and the theft of magic tricks can be stopped.
Protecting ideas is one of the more difficult tasks to accomplish. Once an innovation has been released into the world, how to you adequately compensate its creator. Copyright law protects many things inefficiently as well. Some species of beans and potatoes are copyrighted by farmers and ban all other farmers from growing or selling them. Copyright brings around questions such as, can a person own a species or an idea. How can we make sure that peopled are rewarded for hard work but innovation is not stifled. Magicians need to make money some how and without any protection their tricks would be stolen to quickly to profit from. I think the answer lies in Magicians coming together to create a community that discourages stealing. If magicians created a sort of union they could easily identify who are honorable magicians and who are not.
Magic tricks are difficult to protect. They are not quite ideas, like a new theory in physics, or a physical object, like an iPhone. They are sort of a combination of both. It makes sense that a magician would want to protect their tricks, because they are their ideas and it is how they make a living. However, the implementation of these copyrights posses a serious problem. Their is no way in the current system to do so. In order to copyright or patent the trick, the magician would have to reveal their secrets, otherwise its unfair to other magicians. Its difficult to not violate a legal protection when you won't know what. I think the only solution would be to create a special copyright system specifically for magicians, outside of the law.
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