Sunday, December 23, 2012

Magic Pirates Exposed

This has totally gone under my radar. But I love it. Apparently some guy created a fake website called http://www.sharethemagic.biz/ and people were able to sign up for free pirated magic.

Then he published all the names and email addresses of the people who joined. Unfortunately he removed the list of the people who joined fearing legal consequences. But here is a nice copy: http://instablogg.com/kV8iZxw. have fun recognizing certain names. ;)

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for your support.

Happy Holidays

The M.P.E Team

Marplots said...

Bummer, I didn't make the list.

But... you know... um... I only signed up for research purposes -- to see if anything I had purchased legitimately was on there. Yeah, that's it, that's what I did.

'Cause... um... you know... if I download something for free and then I like it, then I purchase it full price from a dealer. Yeah. That's what I do, for sure. Honest.

Anonymous said...

www.thompeterson.com thompetersonmagic@gmail.com? a lot of those on that list are young men but a few of them are working pros... now that just sad.

Anonymous said...

I bet that guy wasn't the real one. I know thom personally, and i know he would never indulge into such activities.

Anonymous said...

Yes, it was him.

He signed up after we posted a link in another site he was a member of.

This was his reply:

Name: Thomas Moore

Choice of Username: thomas

Email (to confirm membership: thompetersonmagic@gmail.com

Please provide a list of content you are able to share:

I buy stuff, Here are a few book i have: Jared kopf - Leture Notes(magiccon) I have Jerome Finley's 2 Rare book: Contact Mind Reading & SOS both a private release. Sean Goodman - Genetics Paul Carnazzo - Reading bw lines Ran Pink - Abnormal Behavious with Cards I wont be sharing the Jerome books publicly unfortunately as they are very rare.

How did you hear about Share the Magic?:

I heard about this from the mvf forums.


The M.P.E Team

Anonymous said...

It seems like a good idea in theory, but in practice it could get really troublesome. For one, if I wanted to destroy the reputation of another magician, I could sign up using his name and contact information. For another, if I actually was a magician releasing stuff, I might want to join this sort of website to see if my stuff was being pirated.

-The Burnaby Kid

Bizzaro. said...

You would have to know that it was a sting operation to really be effective. Most of the kids downloading stuff don't care about another "well known" magician to fake their name on some unknown site I would think.

Anonymous said...

It still feels presumptuous, even if it means well. If users didn't know that names would be getting published, they do now, so anybody who has a beef with somebody else could easily explore that through fake login names. There are plenty of assholes in the magic community who'd be happy to do a lot worse.

Even IP addresses can be compromised or directly spoofed. There was a website out there that offered to show you every movie you ever downloaded via torrent -- problem was that it didn't account for multiple people in the same household sharing a single internet connection, or IP addresses that get dynamically assigned by ISPs.

I also know of one magician who joined a Vietnamese magic forum website specifically to ask people there not to share the stuff he's published. What happens to guys like him? Even if a sting operation wasn't in the works, that sort of stuff can be gleaned just by looking at a forum's member list.

The best way to ascertain guilt here is direct access to people's hard drives to determine if an illegally-downloaded file is on there. That sucks for content providers, but it's the truth.

-The Burnaby Kid

Jered the Incredible said...

I thought this was totally about Magic Pirates; that would have been way cool!

Tensai said...

I dunno, exposing personal information like Facebook profiles and email addresses seems a little too far. I'm all for stopping piracy, but I feel this is WAY over the line. I think they could have come up with a better way to use the info gathered.

Roland said...

I see no problem in exposing Facebook profiles. They are open anyways. About the email addresses... I'm not to sure. They are after all not attached to a name most of the time. So they have little value except knowing that the owner probably shares illegal magic stuff. Also. The Terms of Service on the website clearly state: "Terms and Conditions:

By signing up to www.sharethemagic.biz you are agreeing to let us publish your information that you put within this website and you agree to let us use your information for third party groups.
All data will become public and by signing up to www.sharethemagic.biz you are agreeing to this."

I find it hard to argue against that.

Anonymous said...

It's a great idea and a smart implementation, but I can't help thinking the team behind this should have dropped the anonymous approach and chosen a more professional approach. From a legal standpoint, the methods employed by FV and CG will prevent any action beyond a public naming from taking place.

Marplots said...

Sharing the email addresses was great. Now I can share with all my new magic friends directly. Isn't that the old school way to do it anyhow? A contact list and email?

Now I'm wondering how many clubs exist to do just this between members directly.

Anonymous said...

Obviously the person behind the FB page is an Amateur,
Someone asked him:
"I'm guessing that one or two names on the list who are magic creators, could have been checking to see if their product was listed."

He Replies by Saying:
"Everyone on that list was a member of the previous website we shut down...for over a year. Active members...this means they were requesting AND uploading content. Over a year....

Any excuses given are bullshit, plain and simple."

Well, Mr. , do you mind explaining what were you doing on those sites,
Downloading free magic? eh..
Before putting professional magicians to blame, see to yourself.
It appears you are a Pirate trying to expose another Pirate, who cant take it anymore.

Anonymous said...

The person above, should understand that the reason anon registered on the site, is they had been alerted to the fact that somebody had uploaded material of theirs on said site.

Anonymous said...

This Same thing could have happened with other magicians & they might also be on a lookout to see if there material is posted, so that they can take it down. And during that time their email's were logged.