A good magic friend of mine has spent the last 18 months developing a gimmick which is based on a prop which was sold over 20 years ago but which has been unavailable for some time. Through endless trial and error, and by dint of producing umpteen prototypes, each slightly different from the last, he has ended up with something that not only is perfect for the effects he wishes to use it for, but which makes a killer prop for many other effects as well.
Excited by this new secret aid, he approached the dealer who owns the rights to the original version, and as a result after further months of tweaking and development, the dealer has just launched the prop. Such is the beauty of the way this works, it has received universal acclaim and even those who had the original apparatus are saying that the new version is superior in many respects.
Naturally enough my friend is delighted by all this as he not only has a great prop to use but is receiving recognition for all the work that he has put into the creation of the apparatus. He has also been following the ‘chatter’ on social media and knowing what he does about the prop, has been amazed at the amount of speculation and interest that the release has caused.
So, all very positive. However, there is another side to all this that he wasn’t prepared for and that is the speed with which the rip off internet dealers have tried to muscle in on the official launch. One dealer he found was already offering a download of the routines that come with the prop, even though they didn’t actually have the apparatus itself!
Unfortunately this is symptomatic of the way some suppliers operate. They quickly produce unauthorised copies, especially of video downloads, and offer them at incredibly cheap prices. So customers doing a web search for a new item are often presented with the choice of paying, for example, £25.99 for an official version, or £1.99 for an identical knock off. For those with no moral compass, the choice is obvious.
The trouble is, those who create ideas and who, like my friend, spend time, money and effort developing a product, are not being rewarded as much as they should be for their efforts. The rip off versions may not be made quite as well, and there may also not be any comeback should there be a problem with the purchase, but that is a risk people who make a decision based purely on price, seem prepared to take. They would rather risk £1.99 than invest in the full amount.
Plagiarism is present in many commercial fields, of course, not just magic. But the world that we move in is very small, and sales of any product, with a few exceptions, can be measured in hundreds rather than in thousands. So, if those who steal ideas and offload them at huge discounts are creaming off a percentage of the potential profits from those who develop the ideas in the first place, it means that the original products have to be priced even higher in order to fund the development and marketing costs incurred.
Ideas, especially good ones, are precious, and it hurts when unethical suppliers undermine and steal what is not theirs. But what is even worse is that there are those who are happy to cash in when they do so.