The Genii Forum

R.E.Byrnes

Again, the advice wouldn't be to "slyly cheat." Like many legal issues, this one doesn't have a clear resolution; it might be infringing or it might not be as performed. There are small adjustments that could likely put it decisively into the realm of parody. And if it were infringing, an ...

R.E.Byrnes

"And advice to keep on using the copyrighted property of Matt Groening or Fox Studios until they notice, hoping to slide under their radar, is extraordinarily bad advice. But anyone who takes legal advice from some random dude on the internet deserves pretty much what he gets, I suppose." ...

R.E.Byrnes

This could go either way (under US law), for some of the reasons noted above. However, it would be very easy to make a few small adjustments to the routine that would make it highly likely to be deemed protected artistic expression and thus non-infringing. As a practical matter, if Fox as the copyri...

R.E.Byrnes

I suspect Derek intended to convey "You would think so. . . " as opposed to "You would think so. . ." Different emphasis; two entirely different connotations.

R.E.Byrnes

I recalled reading in the most recent Persi Diaconis book a counterintuitive explanation as to why it's somewhat less than 52! but now can't find it; perhaps it was conditioned on beginning from a particular arrangement and spoke to the number of possible arrangements from there by way of a conventi...

R.E.Byrnes

He's not the sort of person to just take a title/credit and leave it at that; I suspect he will substantially influence the movie and that the influence will be original and notable.

R.E.Byrnes

Richard Kaufman wrote:Wonderball could be greatly improved by simply doing Astrosphere. The original effect produces a wonderful illusion of floating without jiggling--the ball floats "solidly" and is just great.

Astrosphere was great; much better than Zombie

R.E.Byrnes

I couldn't have made the case better than that, and I am also baffled by the weird fashion of prefacing every self-evident opinion with the inane 'IMHO.'

R.E.Byrnes

A strong case to be made that Seneca wasn't referring to anything like "our work."

R.E.Byrnes

11. Lurk around the back and slip inside when someone brings food to the Inner Circle. It's pretty clear she used "weird" to capture the singular, eccentric experience of going to the Castle, and likened that to winning the award. People also say "weird" in a colloquial way that'...

R.E.Byrnes

"If you're going to quote the Seneca item - get it in context:" Or not. It has coherent, independent meaning removed from the original context, much as most of the "popular quotes" from Shakespeare or Milton or Donne have different meaning as stand-alone aphorisms than in the con...

R.E.Byrnes

It's far more about the copyright holder's willingness to pursue an infringement claim than whether there plausibly is a claim, as there almost always is in any circumstance worth asking about.

R.E.Byrnes

I'd not make Dover's take the last word on this. How to proceed has more to do with how much you value this and risk preferences than any of the various, perhaps contradictory, opinions as to the likely legal dispositions, though of course some of those opinions are more plausible than others, and y...

R.E.Byrnes

Pete: Look into fair use.

R.E.Byrnes

As noted above, domain names overwhelmingly sell for essentially nothing, and yet a ridiculous number of people believe they are sitting on massive riches.

R.E.Byrnes

"The yawning chasm between the performances of most magicians and that of a trained actor is consistently depressing to me." This really seems to get to the essence not just of "magician in trouble" but the more pervasive problem of substandard magic. I was 15 years old when I qu...

R.E.Byrnes

Whatever Tommy Wonder's insights, this device is ineptly executed nearly every time it's attempted by a magician, even in the most exalted venues, and that generally has nothing to do with placing "blame" on the spectators (though that is patently dumb, as opposed to being somehow "of...

R.E.Byrnes

At Magic Cafe, a dozen people would have posted the played-out Arthur C. Clarke comment about magic/technology.

R.E.Byrnes

Television audiences also like The Wire, Breaking Bad and Six Feet Under; TV popularity isn't strictly a measure of being lowbrow and artistically bereft.

R.E.Byrnes

Not Tannen's per se, but the Tannen's magic camp (initially called Tannen's Magic Week). . . I went to the first five years of the Tannen's camp ('75-'79), and it turned out I was the only person who had attended each of those first five years. Tony Spina indicated that some sort of gift from Tannen...

R.E.Byrnes

"Lemons are funny" is a more substantial explanation than many. Lemons are perhaps all the more funny when they are incongruous - i.e., at odds with an established performing persona. Perhaps they are just inherently incongruous with nearly any performance setting. Merely positing that &qu...

R.E.Byrnes

" Without the performer's character, what is left? A non-entity making paper money wind up in a really, really hard place." With the bulk of thin, slapdash constructions offered as characters, that's about all there really is. I suppose we're agreeing; I'm just putting emphasis on the need...

R.E.Byrnes

"but doesn't tell us why the bill made it into the lemon."

Because it's really, really hard for a bill to get into a lemon. I prefer that minimalist rationale to many of the tortured attempts to link a lemon, or whatever, to the performer's 'character.'

R.E.Byrnes

Another great year, Richard; well done. Thanks again for letting me be a part of things.

R.E.Byrnes

Richard is right that there is often not a single, clearly correct copyright designation, which makes for a good law school exam question far more than practical certainty. As a practical matter, therefore, when copyright is ambiguous like this there is often an effort to assemble everyone with a pl...

R.E.Byrnes

And how.

Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres.

R.E.Byrnes

I'll take oblique cat and horse references for 500, Alex...

R.E.Byrnes

It would of course be really outrageous if a major global institution were to be premised on the absurdity of rising from the dead.

R.E.Byrnes

I suspect he arrived at it by adding some amount to what seems to be the typical market price, in the not unrealistic hope that someone who isn't price sensitive will pay that greater amount. Nearly every time something sells for $50 there are people who would have paid $75 just as there are people ...

R.E.Byrnes

Not a lot of options short of charging admission for people to walk through or to perform whatever ridiculous tests 'ghost hunters' do.

R.E.Byrnes

Almost without exception the 'magician in trouble' is delivered in such an inept, jokey way that it's just not credible that the trouble is real. And it's apparently not at all easy to draw on those moments when things really do go wrong and a cold panic sweeps over the performer. Lack of acting abi...

R.E.Byrnes

Baffled by the suggestion that there's something untoward about the photo. No only would I be unbothered if my daughter were in it, I'd be at a loss to know what I ought to be outraged or, to use the go-to term of right now, 'offended' about.

R.E.Byrnes

That's good, I suppose, but magic seems to over-celebrate whenever it's on some middling TV show with jokey acerbic judges, or buried in the D-segment on Letterman. Things like ballet and poetry and opera have come to terms with being outside the mainstream pop culture din, and at its best magic is ...

R.E.Byrnes

Thanks, Richard; and congratulations on striking this arrangement with the Castle.

R.E.Byrnes

Apologies if this has been covered elsewhere, but I understand that an electronic Genii subscription is now part of Castle membership. As it happens, my subscription just expired, so I'm wondering what, if anything, I need to do to continue having access to the electronic edition.

R.E.Byrnes

One I was surprised to discover: Arsenio Hall.

R.E.Byrnes

To underscore the praise for Sara Crasson's series, and the latest installment, this is a far more challenging undertaking than is perhaps obvious. While there are innumerable templates for discussing the application of intellectual property doctrines to music or inventions with broad commercial pur...

R.E.Byrnes

Second the call above for "Book of Secrets." Also, a nascent classic: Helder Guimares' "Reflections." Each book connects the author's command over the most subtle details to performances that appear effortless and utterly natural. Pre-Internet, The World's Greatest Magic was the ...

R.E.Byrnes

Being good at anything is a useful social skill, and there's a measure of deception in virtually every skill that's valued, whether it's selling as a commercial person or creating as an artistic person. Of course being good at some things will always be more highly valued than being good at other th...

R.E.Byrnes

"Nonetheless, there is nothing in the RS agreement mentioning resale. However, one -- or rather, they -- could argue that passing the tricks to another person constitutes revealing them. On the other side, though, in New York law contracts are assignable unless specified otherwise. (Don't know ...

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