
Magicians fought over an ultra-secret tracker dedicated to stealing magic tricks - juanito
http://www.businessinsider.de/inside-art-of-misdirection-ultra-exclusive-private-torrent-tracker-magical-pirates-invites-2016-11
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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.

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nyolfen
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.

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imron
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.

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TillE
> 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
> 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.

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clort
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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regularfry
I suppose what you'd end up copyrighting is the final effect, not how it's
achieved. Which is, I guess, the point.

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manarth
Without knowledge of the finer points of copyright law (IANAL), is this (the
final effect) even copyrightable?

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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.

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

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loup-vaillant
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.

~~~
klenwell
Had something like this debate with manager at last job. Came to a head in my
annual review.

Manager: "As senior developer, you lack sufficient knowledge of our most
important application."

Me: "Wait. I am the one who wrote most the documentation that is in our
knowledge base for that application. I am the one who set up the knowledge
base."

Manager: "That is not knowledge. Knowledge is what is in your head."

Me: _blinks incredulously_

I departed the company shortly after this exchange.

But I think you're right. It was certainly the manager's idea that if
knowledge was visibly scarce and hard to obtain, his position would be treated
(and generally was, among his superiors) with the respect he felt it deserved.
But I'd have to assert that this secret society dedicated to hoarding
knowledge was a self-delusional sect.

That's generally been my experience.

~~~
brazzledazzle
That's so bizarre. Was he trying to create some kind of official narrative on
paper that he had the knowledge and you didn't? Or was he trying to tell you
to document less and hide information?

~~~
klenwell
> Was he trying to create some kind of official narrative on paper that he had
> the knowledge and you didn't?

Yes, this. We had actually worked together amicably for several years, he as
senior, I as mid-level. Then we both got bumped up. As part of my new
responsibilities as senior, I tried to surface issues and confront them
transparently. I was mindful not to point fingers or show anyone up but rather
identify them as shortcomings in our practices or policies.

For cultural reasons, I think he felt threatened by this and assumed it was
his responsibility to hide issues and save his own face. It fell apart pretty
quickly. It sucked but I've used it as a career lesson.

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quickben
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
The open source secret society

~~~
SEJeff
Perhaps we could name it: F Society

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cyberferret
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.

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ipunchghosts
Any if this on the darknet?

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Neliquat
Sounds like the music industry.

