illegal to reveal magic tricks

A place where beginners can participate, ask questions, and post their views. However, beginners typically ask a lot of questions about sources, tricks, books, and so on. In fact, all magicians are interested (or should be) in the provenance of tricks, ideas, and related matters. This department will service these needs.
zhurayaa
Posts: 1
Joined: March 25th, 2014, 3:29 am

illegal to reveal magic tricks

Postby zhurayaa » April 10th, 2014, 2:51 am

Is it illegal to reveal magic tricks? I have noticed online that people are revealing magic tricks, the newer effects, as it is copyrighted and patented, but is it illegal to reveal those tricks? Oh and also i'm not going to be revealing tricks, I'm a magician and I do it as a side job, but i get tired of people revealing them which makes thing less interesting and less exciting for my audience.
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Last edited by zhurayaa on April 11th, 2014, 6:08 am, edited 1 time in total.

Jonathan Townsend
Posts: 8704
Joined: January 17th, 2008, 12:00 pm
Location: Westchester, NY
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Re: illegal to reveal magic tricks

Postby Jonathan Townsend » April 10th, 2014, 8:15 am

no

and that's been happening for centuries.
Mundus vult decipi -per Caleb Carr's story Killing Time

webbmaster
Posts: 192
Joined: November 30th, 2016, 11:38 am
Favorite Magician: richard Kaufmann

Re: illegal to reveal magic tricks

Postby webbmaster » April 26th, 2017, 2:54 pm

And that's why so many of us keep trying to innovate variations on tricks so IF someone knows the standard way, if they see the new variation on the same trick that it will fool them...not that fooling them is the be-all-and-end-all of this but if someone is yelling out 'I know! I know!' it hurts your performance.

We call it 'making a trick your own', which means changing it here and there to suit yourself, and at the same time it gives the trick a different 'look' which throws off the ones 'in the know'. And this is also why many of us still like the books, and not the dealer items which may have to be done a certain way...and if someone saw their friend's kid do the new thing badly.

On a tangent, and I apologize, I once saw a dealer sell a Raven to a kid that was on his way to do a show. Imagine, going to do a show and on the way to the show the kid drops into the magic shop to buy something to do in the show in twenty minutes hence. And knowing this, the dealer sells it to him !

The only defense or at least the best I know is the development of variations and avoidance of dealer items that can only be done one way.

performer
Posts: 3508
Joined: August 7th, 2015, 10:35 pm

Re: illegal to reveal magic tricks

Postby performer » April 27th, 2017, 12:01 am

I wish to God it WAS illegal but alas that ain't gonna happen! Mind you Hitler made it illegal to publish magic secrets in German newspapers so he did get one thing right anyway.


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