Codes of Practice
The most effective protection against the public exposure of magic methods may be a matter of ethics or peer pressure. One of the largest societies of magicians in the world, the International Brotherhood of Magicians, has a Code of Ethics which states:
- All members of the International Brotherhood of Magicians agree to oppose the willful exposure to the public of any principles of the Art of Magic, or the methods employed in any magic effect or illusion.
The Brotherhood advises that any individual who is a professional or amateur magician should be aware that "exposing" the methods of an illusion may result in damage to their relations among other magicians.
However, such codes don't extend to selling magic, though magicians consider the seller of a magic trick should prove that the purchaser intends to learn and perform the trick for others, thereby becoming a magician, rather than simply wanting to know how a magic trick is done out of curiosity.
Read more about this topic: Intellectual Rights To Magic Methods
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“We must trust infinitely to the beneficent necessity which shines through all laws. Human nature expresses itself in them as characteristically as in statues, or songs, or railroads, and an abstract of the codes of nations would be an abstract of the common conscience.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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“As an example of just how useless these philosophers are for any practice in life there is Socrates himself, the one and only wise man, according to the Delphic Oracle. Whenever he tried to do anything in public he had to break off amid general laughter. While he was philosophizing about clouds and ideas, measuring a flea’s foot and marveling at a midge’s humming, he learned nothing about the affairs of ordinary life.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)