> 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.
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..
My understanding is that tricks aren't copywritable, but performances are. So magicians have sometimes successfully sued each-other over copying not just a trick but their delivery of said trick. That was the justification for the Penn and Teller lawsuit mentioned in the article
But I think the issue with the site discussed in the article is mainly just copyrighted material:, books, videos and the like.
[conplete speculation, by me]
They may be using the copyright of things they don't care about to shutdown the site to eliminate the things they do care about which they have no legal means to eliminate directly.
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.