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Magicians fought over an ultra-secret tracker dedicated to stealing magic tricks

businessinsider.de

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Re: Magicians fought over an ultra-secret tracker dedicated to stealing magic tricks

#11

Post by mch82 »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #4

This hints at a more general problem: how does one gather a high-quality repository of knowledge on any given subject? How do you get enough stuff? How do you keep the noise down? I believe some subjects make the problem harder than others. Programming for instance is full of hard to check claims. Even established techniques are hard to assess. Say you need to parse stuff. Will you go recursive descent? LALR? Earley?…

For most of human history groups of people have operated to restrict the flow of knowledge for the benefit of the controlling group. Technological advancement has exploded since governments began to incentivize release of information through the concept of patents.

Some examples...

See "guilds" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guild

See "companies" with "trade secrets".

See Vatican Library (no longer fully secret) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_Library

See "classified information" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classified_information

Re: Magicians fought over an ultra-secret tracker dedicated to stealing magic tricks

#12

Post by DougN7 »

js8 wrote: post #10
loup-vaillant wrote: post #4

This hints at a more general problem: how does one gather a high-quality repository of knowledge on any given subject? How do you get enough stuff? How do you keep the noise down? I believe some subjects make the problem harder than others. Programming for instance is full of hard to check claims. Even established techniques are hard to assess. Say you need to parse stuff. Will you go recursive descent? LALR? Earley?…

This was already tried with Encyclopedia Britannica and it doesn't quite work. The truth is, if you want high quality, more eyes the better. (And the article mentions that magical art was greatly improved by general accessibility of things on the Internet.)

Why didn't the encyclopedia work (for its time)? Before the Internet it was the best, most information dense, source available. Not perfect, but better than any available alternatives.

Re: Magicians fought over an ultra-secret tracker dedicated to stealing magic tricks

#13

Post by CalChris »

TillE wrote: post #3

> The site is a trading post for stolen, pirated and unlawfully copied tricks, which are covered by copyright, trademarks or other intellectual property in much the same way that TV shows and films are. A video or whatever may be copyrighted, but it's not really possible to protect a "trick". You can patent a process, but of course this reveals it to the public. Most of the described contents of the tracker are comme…

Magic tricks can be patented.

https://www.google.com/patents/US6623366

And of course they can be trade secreted. Can they be copyrighted? That I dunno. A performance can be copyrighted. But the ideas? Probably not.

Re: Magicians fought over an ultra-secret tracker dedicated to stealing magic tricks

#15

Post by Animats »

These aren't exactly big secrets. Anyone can get copies of The Linking Ring, the magazine of the International Brotherhood of Magicians, and see ads for many of the tricks that require special props. (There used to be a competing publication, the "Magic-Gram", but it may be defunct.)

Realistically, if there's a video of a trick, you can usually figure it out. If there are multiple videos from different angles, it's easier. For that matter, there are explanatory videos for most of the big tricks on YouTube now.

I once saw a professional magician having a miserable time performing on the stage on the Santa Cruz beach. He was doing a levitation, and in brilliant sunlight it was embarrassingly obvious how it worked.

Re: Magicians fought over an ultra-secret tracker dedicated to stealing magic tricks

#16

Post by vinchuco »

quickben wrote: post #6

Who's up for starting a comp sci secret society? We'll share the best ways to split a cake. The optimal algorithms on how many kittens to have to improve moods, and, best stats how to not forget important anniversaries while trying to boot up a Vulkan pipeline. :)

The open source secret society

Re: Magicians fought over an ultra-secret tracker dedicated to stealing magic tricks

#17

Post by SEJeff »

vinchuco wrote: post #16
quickben wrote: post #6

Who's up for starting a comp sci secret society? We'll share the best ways to split a cake. The optimal algorithms on how many kittens to have to improve moods, and, best stats how to not forget important anniversaries while trying to boot up a Vulkan pipeline. :)

The open source secret society

Perhaps we could name it: F Society

Re: Magicians fought over an ultra-secret tracker dedicated to stealing magic tricks

#18

Post by simonw »

If I want to know how a classic trick is done I'll look at the Wikipedia page. It often won't reveal the secret directly, but if you check the page history you'll find an edit war between magicians which exposes exactly how it works.

Re: Magicians fought over an ultra-secret tracker dedicated to stealing magic tricks

#19

Post by sweettea »

DougN7 wrote: post #12
js8 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was already tried with Encyclopedia Britannica and it doesn't quite work. The truth is, if you want high quality, more eyes the better. (And the article mentions that magical art was greatly improved by general accessibility of things on the Internet.)

Why didn't the encyclopedia work (for its time)? Before the Internet it was the best, most information dense, source available. Not perfect, but better than any available alternatives.

Heck, _during_ the age of the internet it's the best, most information dense source available, far outclassing Wikipedia on the most used topics.

Re: Magicians fought over an ultra-secret tracker dedicated to stealing magic tricks

#20

Post by clort »

regularfry wrote: post #5
TillE wrote: post #3

> The site is a trading post for stolen, pirated and unlawfully copied tricks, which are covered by copyright, trademarks or other intellectual property in much the same way that TV shows and films are. A video or whatever may be copyrighted, but it's not really possible to protect a "trick". You can patent a process, but of course this reveals it to the public. Most of the described contents of the tracker are comme…

> A video or whatever may be copyrighted, but it's not really possible to protect a "trick". Interestingly, this isn't quite true. People are trying to exert copyright over the specific motions under choreography protection.

I wonder how this would go down in a court of law, in that the specific motions they are claiming copyright on were /obfuscated/ or downright /concealed/ from view. I wonder if you can legally be considered to have copied something you have not seen..
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