--- MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
You pay for the secret when you buy a magic effect. Revealing it on Wikipedia certainly detracts from the product's commercial viability.
Lots of people who sell information will no doubt find Wikipedia detracts from their commercial viability (Britannica Online?), but that's not our concern. Our job on Wikipedia is to document topics based on the available reliable sources. Sorry to sound callous about it, but if that happens to negatively impact the business of selling secrets, then tough cheese.
Excessively long plot summaries of films and books can constitute a copyright violation because while they're not an exact copy, they damage intellectual rights of the copyrighted material. Can't the same apply to summarizing a magic trick manual to the point while the text is not a copy it still violates the copyright of the text?
Our article on [[copyright]] says:
`Copyright law covers only the particular form or manner in which ideas or information have been manifested, the "form of material expression". It is not designed or intended to cover the actual idea, concepts, facts, styles, or techniques which may be embodied in or represented by the copyright work.'
-- Matt
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com
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