5 ms·

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

161 points by juanito 10y ago

Neliquat 10y ago
Sounds like the music industry.
TillE 10y ago
> 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 commercially released products. That's really not "stealing tricks" in any way.
- regularfry 10y ago
  > 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.
  - clort 10y ago
    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..
    - regularfry 10y ago
      I suppose what you'd end up copyrighting is the final effect, not how it's achieved. Which is, I guess, the point.
      - manarth 10y ago
        Without knowledge of the finer points of copyright law (IANAL), is this (the final effect) even copyrightable?
- rileymat2 10y ago
  [conplete speculation, by me] They may be using the copyright of things they don't care about to shutdown the site to eliminate the things they do care about which they have no legal means to eliminate directly.
- simplicio 10y ago
  My understanding is that tricks aren't copywritable, but performances are. So magicians have sometimes successfully sued each-other over copying not just a trick but their delivery of said trick. That was the justification for the Penn and Teller lawsuit mentioned in the article But I think the issue with the site discussed in the article is mainly just copyrighted material:, books, videos and the like.
- CalChris 10y ago
  Magic tricks can be patented. https://www.google.com/patents/US6623366 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.
loup-vaillant 10y ago
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? PEG? Might depend on what you want to parse, which environment you're working in, how much time you may invest… Or say you write a compiler. Will you use OCaml/F#/Haskell for the ease of handling recursive data structures? Or do you want C/C++ because of the speed, and you know tricks to avoid recursive data structures anyway? One tempting solution is to start a secret society dedicated to hoard knowledge on the chosen subject. It would be hard to get in, but once there you'd only get quality stuff. (Or you might have gotten into a self-delusional sect…) The idea is, maybe if knowledge was visibly scarce and hard to obtain, instead of merely buried under a mountain of noise, we would treat it with the respect it deserves.
- eponeponepon 10y ago
  Self-evidently it is possible to gather a high quality repository of knowledge; it's been done many times in history. I suspect that the real solution is an absence of secrecy - indefinite hoarding of information is no help to anyone except those who want their egos stroked by the number of "things" they have, and knowledge that nobody can access is barely knowledge at all. As far as noise goes, you can never hope to rub it out completely. There will always be transcription errors, deliberate mistruths and gaps - the most you can do is carefully curate the repository to make sure you catch and repair as much as possible. Essentially, the closest thing we have is probably Wikipedia. I don't know if that's especially complimentary to us as a species.
- js8 10y ago
  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.)
  - 10y ago
quickben 10y ago
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. :)
- vinchuco 10y ago
  The open source secret society
  - SEJeff 10y ago
    Perhaps we could name it: F Society
- icantdrive55 10y ago
  Good idea. It seems like, even here, people are motivated by self-interest, and self-preservation. Sometimes I feel like I just being sold something, and not necessarily the best Trick. Finding the right society members, and then letting go if they sell-out, or become stale; might be an issue. Kinda like the professor who has tenure, but should be put out to pasture? I do feel Stack Overflow, etc. does a great job, but since languages, platforms, algorithms, are just going to increase, it would be nice to have a group of highly respected people(irregardless of income, or spinish behind their names) tell the truth, ot the truth at a certain point in time. Sometimes the democratic method of vetting information fails. And the pirate in me, would love to get some proprietary information on the gizmos I buy. Yes--I'm a horrid person. I want to know how my car's computer regulates my emissions, or how to fix my Apple devices. I wouldn't mind seeing a stock site while we're at it. I honestly don't know where the SEC draws the line on insider information anymore.
- teddyh 10y ago
  Let’s call it… Dark Science http://dresdencodak.com/2016/05/23/dark-science-64-turncoat/ http://dresdencodak.com/2016/05/23/dark-science-64-turncoat/
ipunchghosts 10y ago
Any if this on the darknet?
Animats 10y ago
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.
- nightcracker 10y ago
  There are many videos of hans moretti's cardboard box trick, but I still have no clue how it's done...
simonw 10y ago
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.
- nyolfen 10y ago
  now this is interesting! what exactly is the rationale used by those who would prefer it remain secret? i assume it's for the preservation of their job or hobby, but i doubt that would fly on its own.
  - Tempest1981 10y ago
    These are essentially trade secrets -- like the recipe for KFC or Coca Cola. Except with the latter, there is plausible denial.
  - imron 10y ago
    A culture of a magician never reveals his secrets. With the secret unknown it's 'magic'. With the secret known it becomes just a simple trick.
cyberferret 10y ago
I have been interested in magic for a long time, and have subscriptions or accounts at most major magic retailers in the world. I am not the best at performing magic tricks (mainly because I don't have that story telling personality that is needed to execute most tricks), but I love learning them and practicing them in my spare time. No need to go to the dark net though - 99% of magic tricks are now readily exposed on Youtube public channels, and I am not just talking about the original instructions videos being leaked on there. A myriad of kids stand ready to either perform tricks so badly that they give away the techniques, or else outright show how things are done. Still though, it is like seeing how a commercial airliner is flown. Watching hundreds of hours of video footage is no substitute for formal training and real like practice. Also, one of the biggest draws of magic to me is hearing of the origins of most tricks, and researching guys who came up with these things over a hundred years ago.

161 points by juanito 10y ago

Sounds like the music industry.

TillE 10y ago

> 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 commercially released products. That's really not "stealing tricks" in any way.

regularfry 10y ago
> 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.
- clort 10y ago
  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..
  - regularfry 10y ago
    I suppose what you'd end up copyrighting is the final effect, not how it's achieved. Which is, I guess, the point.
    - manarth 10y ago
      Without knowledge of the finer points of copyright law (IANAL), is this (the final effect) even copyrightable?
rileymat2 10y ago
[conplete speculation, by me] They may be using the copyright of things they don't care about to shutdown the site to eliminate the things they do care about which they have no legal means to eliminate directly.
simplicio 10y ago
My understanding is that tricks aren't copywritable, but performances are. So magicians have sometimes successfully sued each-other over copying not just a trick but their delivery of said trick. That was the justification for the Penn and Teller lawsuit mentioned in the article But I think the issue with the site discussed in the article is mainly just copyrighted material:, books, videos and the like.
CalChris 10y ago
Magic tricks can be patented. https://www.google.com/patents/US6623366 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.

loup-vaillant 10y ago

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? PEG? Might depend on what you want to parse, which environment you're working in, how much time you may invest… Or say you write a compiler. Will you use OCaml/F#/Haskell for the ease of handling recursive data structures? Or do you want C/C++ because of the speed, and you know tricks to avoid recursive data structures anyway? One tempting solution is to start a secret society dedicated to hoard knowledge on the chosen subject. It would be hard to get in, but once there you'd only get quality stuff. (Or you might have gotten into a self-delusional sect…) The idea is, maybe if knowledge was visibly scarce and hard to obtain, instead of merely buried under a mountain of noise, we would treat it with the respect it deserves.

eponeponepon 10y ago
Self-evidently it is possible to gather a high quality repository of knowledge; it's been done many times in history. I suspect that the real solution is an absence of secrecy - indefinite hoarding of information is no help to anyone except those who want their egos stroked by the number of "things" they have, and knowledge that nobody can access is barely knowledge at all. As far as noise goes, you can never hope to rub it out completely. There will always be transcription errors, deliberate mistruths and gaps - the most you can do is carefully curate the repository to make sure you catch and repair as much as possible. Essentially, the closest thing we have is probably Wikipedia. I don't know if that's especially complimentary to us as a species.
js8 10y ago
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.)
- 10y ago

quickben 10y ago

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. :)

vinchuco 10y ago
The open source secret society
- SEJeff 10y ago
  Perhaps we could name it: F Society
icantdrive55 10y ago
Good idea. It seems like, even here, people are motivated by self-interest, and self-preservation. Sometimes I feel like I just being sold something, and not necessarily the best Trick. Finding the right society members, and then letting go if they sell-out, or become stale; might be an issue. Kinda like the professor who has tenure, but should be put out to pasture? I do feel Stack Overflow, etc. does a great job, but since languages, platforms, algorithms, are just going to increase, it would be nice to have a group of highly respected people(irregardless of income, or spinish behind their names) tell the truth, ot the truth at a certain point in time. Sometimes the democratic method of vetting information fails. And the pirate in me, would love to get some proprietary information on the gizmos I buy. Yes--I'm a horrid person. I want to know how my car's computer regulates my emissions, or how to fix my Apple devices. I wouldn't mind seeing a stock site while we're at it. I honestly don't know where the SEC draws the line on insider information anymore.
teddyh 10y ago
Let’s call it… Dark Science http://dresdencodak.com/2016/05/23/dark-science-64-turncoat/ http://dresdencodak.com/2016/05/23/dark-science-64-turncoat/

ipunchghosts 10y ago

Any if this on the darknet?

Animats 10y ago

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.

nightcracker 10y ago
There are many videos of hans moretti's cardboard box trick, but I still have no clue how it's done...

simonw 10y ago

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.

nyolfen 10y ago
now this is interesting! what exactly is the rationale used by those who would prefer it remain secret? i assume it's for the preservation of their job or hobby, but i doubt that would fly on its own.
- Tempest1981 10y ago
  These are essentially trade secrets -- like the recipe for KFC or Coca Cola. Except with the latter, there is plausible denial.
- imron 10y ago
  A culture of a magician never reveals his secrets. With the secret unknown it's 'magic'. With the secret known it becomes just a simple trick.

cyberferret 10y ago

I have been interested in magic for a long time, and have subscriptions or accounts at most major magic retailers in the world. I am not the best at performing magic tricks (mainly because I don't have that story telling personality that is needed to execute most tricks), but I love learning them and practicing them in my spare time. No need to go to the dark net though - 99% of magic tricks are now readily exposed on Youtube public channels, and I am not just talking about the original instructions videos being leaked on there. A myriad of kids stand ready to either perform tricks so badly that they give away the techniques, or else outright show how things are done. Still though, it is like seeing how a commercial airliner is flown. Watching hundreds of hours of video footage is no substitute for formal training and real like practice. Also, one of the biggest draws of magic to me is hearing of the origins of most tricks, and researching guys who came up with these things over a hundred years ago.