Norms-Based Intellectual Property Systems: The Case of French Chefs(2008)

Penn and Teller make a lot of noise about not being afraid of the Magic Castle and revealing tricks, but the only tricks they've really exposed are the really old tricks like the Cup and Balls where knowing how it's done doesn't really spoil it very much, and most magicians don't care about that kind of thing very much, especially since there have been books explaining how to do it for literally hundreds of years including magic kits you can buy at any book store.

What _really_ annoys magicians are people publishing tutorials for original tricks that are still being performed by the person that developed them, and most of them think that if the method is going to be published, it should be published by the performer through normal "magic store" channels. Outsiders, OTOH, don't care at all about any of that and frequently publish tutorials and exposures for tricks on youtube, and don't really suffer any negative consequences for it because they're not working magicians and don't intend to be.

It's actually really similar to the way that EDM producers and DJs work. They all are playing "other people's music", and a lot of them make unauthorized remixes and bootlegs of other people's work, but they also have a network of dj-to-dj music distribution where producers give out exclusive demos of their newest songs and remixes (some original and legit, some not) to other djs that they're friendly with, and if you were to send out copies of someone _else's_ illegal remix, you'd get black listed and lose out on gigs and getting any songs from other DJs in that network in the future.

There's actually a pretty famous example of a violation of this norm. Eric Prydz's Call On Me started as a live remix that Thomas Bangalter (of Daft Punk) performed in a set that was copied around a lot and generated a lot of demand for the remix (which didn't actually exist). Thomas Bangalter had zero interest in releasing it, so several white label recreations happened that were produced by unknown DJs (because nobody famous would do it because it would have been lame to do). Eventually Ministry of Sound put a ton of money behind getting it released as a single and paid Eric Prydz a giant pile of money to basically remaster one of those white labels that someone else made and put his name on it, and then they paid Steve Winwood to come back into the studio and make a note-for-note remake of Valerie just so they could sample it because the original label wouldn't clear the sample.

It left a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths and tainted Eric Prydz's early career, largely because it wasn't even his style of music and he was forced to play it in every set, almost starting a riot in at least one place because he refused to play it. It was a huge hit though, and nobody faced legal repercussions, because "reproducing someone else's bootleg remix" isn't actually against the law, it's just kind of lame.

Linked for convenience- https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/epdf/10.1287/orsc.1070.03...

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