5 ms·

I think the most common argument I hear against IP protections for software is that so much of it is obvious, or incremental. We have companies patenting and su

I think the most common argument I hear against IP protections for software is that so much of it is obvious, or incremental. We have companies patenting and suing over techniques which are considered common knowledge by many programmers. How silly was it that Oracle's recent huge lawsuit ended up hinging on a range check function? But is that the same as a masterful magic trick? And if not, should we treat it the same? I don't think it's the same thing at all. A master magician might easily spend years practicing a trick -- the right mechanics, the right theatricality, anticipating the audience response, coming up with some new illusion -- and then, as the article describes, if that trick is self-contained enough, someone else might see it and work out how it's done and then sell the same trick to people who haven't invested anywhere near as much effort in practicing it. So I don't think that we can say, well, this is just like software, it's an idea, and therefore we shouldn't protect it. I think that the very idea behind IP laws in the first place was to protect effort -- to safeguard someone's livelihood if they spent years developing an idea, so that someone else wouldn't simply come along immediately afterward and usurp the idea and rob that person of all of the effort that they invested in developing it. There's this huge difference in effort between writing simple functions in software and developing masterful magic tricks, and we should recognize that. Nor do I think that Penn & Teller are at all guilty of hypocrisy. I think it's enough to have just seen some episodes of Fool Us to see that they can have huge amounts of respect for magicians who copy their tricks, so long as those magicians add something unique to it. That's all they ask: take what we do, and do it better. I can not imagine defending the reverse engineering and subsequent sale of someone else's unique illusion under the umbrella that "software patents are bad". I am somewhat more dismayed that the article seemed to present a good enough case for this all on its own, but the discussion so far is ignoring it -- almost as if everyone just skimmed it.

pbhjpbhj 14y ago
>the very idea behind IP laws in the first place was to protect effort // The idea from the point of view of the populus is to encourage innovation and open cultural expression. A corollary of that is the protection of livelihood of creators/inventors if that is required to support the general aims. So are illusionists who're creating innovative cultural expressions of their art ceasing to create for want of funding and because others are following their lead? Or are such illusionists who create, model and use novel illusions able to generate a reasonable return for that good without additional IP protection and thus with the addition of such works entering the public domain at the earliest possible point. [I concede I've not read the article yet (shock!) as it was blocked for me].
- majormajor 14y ago
  Part of the article discussed a "trick inventor" who's pretty much stopped coming up with new ones in favor of other things, like writing about the history of magic, since it's reaching the point where he couldn't make a profit on it: "Invention is all fuzzy, sloppy stuff," Steinmeyer says. "I have patents, and I have had patents that have expired. Everything has a limited lifetime. But when a person can't make a living by coming up with new material, that's when you have to wonder about the system. I would say that over the last few years, the last ten years, it's a net zero. I'm putting as much money into it as I'm getting out."
  - SeanLuke 14y ago
    Jim Steinmeyer is the man. (http://www.jimsteinmeyer.com/ http://www.jimsteinmeyer.com/) Much of the magic world is divided into two jobs: people who design tricks and people who present them to the audience. Both are difficult and respected positions. Jim is one of the very topmost people with the first job (Teller does both). In addition to his career as an illusion engineer, Jim also is a major scholar on magic history. His book, "Hiding the Elephant", is an awesome read. Interesting, and particularly relevant to this discussion, is the fact that "Hiding the Elephant" spends a fair bit of time going over probably the single most famous theft of magic in history: when American magician Harry Kellar stole the British magician John Maskelyne's "The Entranced Fakir" levitating woman trick. Kellar bribed one of Maskelyne's stage magicians, Paul Valadon, to obtain the plans to the trick, and then used the stolen trick to establish himself as maybe the most famous American magician of the time. His entire career in magic had been founded on plagiarism.
haberman 14y ago
> I think that the very idea behind IP laws in the first place was to protect effort No, this is know as a "sweat of the brow" interpretation and has been rejected by the US Supreme Court. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow Just because something takes effort does not mean it should be protected. Just because a person could make more money by having exclusivity does not mean that thing should be protected. I haven't thought about the issue of magic tricks enough to know what I think about it, but I definitely resist the notion that something should be protected simply because it took work to create. That way leads to a society where everything is pay-per-view. For example, just because I scan an old book doesn't mean I should own a copyright on the scan.
- eli 14y ago
  For example, just because I scan an old book doesn't mean I should own a copyright on the scan. Just to play devils advocate, why not? Wouldn't that result in many more old books being scanned that otherwise wouldn't be? Wouldn't competition force down the price of the popular old books?
  - lmm 14y ago
    That's a backwards way to look at it. Copyright is a very powerful protection, we sacrifice a lot for it (look at all the creativity that's still going on around Sherlock Holmes, or in illegal fanfiction for more recent works, and think how much more creative expression there might be if more cultural icons were without copyright). The bar to justify extending copyright to something new should be set high; I'd rather risk having fewer old books scanned than have someone unable to make a new creative work because he'd got the idea from a scan of an old book that turned out to be copyrighted.
    - gyom 14y ago
      Just think about how George Lucas clearly wasn't the best person to write the Star Wars prequels. I would gladly pay for a well-written IP-infringing new version of Matrix 2-3 instead of the official crap that the rights owners put out.
drhowarddrfine 14y ago
And fundamental. I've always considered any software patents to be a farce because they are based on the fundamentals of the underlying microprocessor hardware and code. I would not take issue with copyrights on programs but not patents. To patent software would be like patenting books where, like books, you are piecing together the fundamental words of a language to create a work. A copyright makes far more sense than a patent.
einhverfr 14y ago
I am fine with the literary aspects of it being protected provided that the practical aspects are not, or vice versa. Of if Teller wants the practical aspects protected, he can file for a patent, providing directions for someone reasonably skilled in the art, to understand what he is doing. What I am not fine with is this idea that IP is protected for its own sake. We need to remember that it is a quid quo pro, and not merely a reward for entertainers.
- pydave 14y ago
  > I am fine with the literary aspects of it being protected > provided that the practical aspects are not I guess you're thinking along the lines of a playwright who sells scripts of her play, but cannot prevent people from performing the play (since they already bought the script)?
  - einhverfr 14y ago
    More along the lines that if you don't disclose how you do the illusion you can't prevent other people from publishing write-ups or selling kits to do something similar. Then magic tricks can all be patented, and protected for the life of the patent. Interested amateurs can look up the patents, but magicians can rest assured that few in their audience will take that step. Seems like a perfect tradeoff to me.

pbhjpbhj 14y ago

>the very idea behind IP laws in the first place was to protect effort // The idea from the point of view of the populus is to encourage innovation and open cultural expression. A corollary of that is the protection of livelihood of creators/inventors if that is required to support the general aims. So are illusionists who're creating innovative cultural expressions of their art ceasing to create for want of funding and because others are following their lead? Or are such illusionists who create, model and use novel illusions able to generate a reasonable return for that good without additional IP protection and thus with the addition of such works entering the public domain at the earliest possible point. [I concede I've not read the article yet (shock!) as it was blocked for me].

majormajor 14y ago
Part of the article discussed a "trick inventor" who's pretty much stopped coming up with new ones in favor of other things, like writing about the history of magic, since it's reaching the point where he couldn't make a profit on it: "Invention is all fuzzy, sloppy stuff," Steinmeyer says. "I have patents, and I have had patents that have expired. Everything has a limited lifetime. But when a person can't make a living by coming up with new material, that's when you have to wonder about the system. I would say that over the last few years, the last ten years, it's a net zero. I'm putting as much money into it as I'm getting out."
- SeanLuke 14y ago
  Jim Steinmeyer is the man. (http://www.jimsteinmeyer.com/ http://www.jimsteinmeyer.com/) Much of the magic world is divided into two jobs: people who design tricks and people who present them to the audience. Both are difficult and respected positions. Jim is one of the very topmost people with the first job (Teller does both). In addition to his career as an illusion engineer, Jim also is a major scholar on magic history. His book, "Hiding the Elephant", is an awesome read. Interesting, and particularly relevant to this discussion, is the fact that "Hiding the Elephant" spends a fair bit of time going over probably the single most famous theft of magic in history: when American magician Harry Kellar stole the British magician John Maskelyne's "The Entranced Fakir" levitating woman trick. Kellar bribed one of Maskelyne's stage magicians, Paul Valadon, to obtain the plans to the trick, and then used the stolen trick to establish himself as maybe the most famous American magician of the time. His entire career in magic had been founded on plagiarism.

haberman 14y ago

> I think that the very idea behind IP laws in the first place was to protect effort No, this is know as a "sweat of the brow" interpretation and has been rejected by the US Supreme Court. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow Just because something takes effort does not mean it should be protected. Just because a person could make more money by having exclusivity does not mean that thing should be protected. I haven't thought about the issue of magic tricks enough to know what I think about it, but I definitely resist the notion that something should be protected simply because it took work to create. That way leads to a society where everything is pay-per-view. For example, just because I scan an old book doesn't mean I should own a copyright on the scan.

eli 14y ago
For example, just because I scan an old book doesn't mean I should own a copyright on the scan. Just to play devils advocate, why not? Wouldn't that result in many more old books being scanned that otherwise wouldn't be? Wouldn't competition force down the price of the popular old books?
- lmm 14y ago
  That's a backwards way to look at it. Copyright is a very powerful protection, we sacrifice a lot for it (look at all the creativity that's still going on around Sherlock Holmes, or in illegal fanfiction for more recent works, and think how much more creative expression there might be if more cultural icons were without copyright). The bar to justify extending copyright to something new should be set high; I'd rather risk having fewer old books scanned than have someone unable to make a new creative work because he'd got the idea from a scan of an old book that turned out to be copyrighted.
  - gyom 14y ago
    Just think about how George Lucas clearly wasn't the best person to write the Star Wars prequels. I would gladly pay for a well-written IP-infringing new version of Matrix 2-3 instead of the official crap that the rights owners put out.

drhowarddrfine 14y ago

And fundamental. I've always considered any software patents to be a farce because they are based on the fundamentals of the underlying microprocessor hardware and code. I would not take issue with copyrights on programs but not patents. To patent software would be like patenting books where, like books, you are piecing together the fundamental words of a language to create a work. A copyright makes far more sense than a patent.

einhverfr 14y ago

I am fine with the literary aspects of it being protected provided that the practical aspects are not, or vice versa. Of if Teller wants the practical aspects protected, he can file for a patent, providing directions for someone reasonably skilled in the art, to understand what he is doing. What I am not fine with is this idea that IP is protected for its own sake. We need to remember that it is a quid quo pro, and not merely a reward for entertainers.

pydave 14y ago
> I am fine with the literary aspects of it being protected > provided that the practical aspects are not I guess you're thinking along the lines of a playwright who sells scripts of her play, but cannot prevent people from performing the play (since they already bought the script)?
- einhverfr 14y ago
  More along the lines that if you don't disclose how you do the illusion you can't prevent other people from publishing write-ups or selling kits to do something similar. Then magic tricks can all be patented, and protected for the life of the patent. Interested amateurs can look up the patents, but magicians can rest assured that few in their audience will take that step. Seems like a perfect tradeoff to me.