Ownership, “Trade Secrets,” etc.

It seems in the world of cardistry, on several occasions, people claim that moves somebody else shows in their video has already been published or done/owned by some other person.

This is fine and dandy, but the one important thing that seems to be missing is PROOF.

For some reason, people seem to think that no proof is necessary to claim they did the move first. This is silly. Now on first mention of this, it was thought that whatever book this was published in would be released to the larger audience as proof and to further the art. But after five years this has not happened.

Five years of “pushing the art forward” and helping the community out — yet all this secrecy? For what? It seems there is an urge to push for creativity from minds that claim they are withholding the majority of their material. Is it laziness? Is it actually published? Does publish mean “I wrote it on a typewriter” or does publish mean “I wrote it, got an actual publisher and sold it worldwide.”

There is a big difference between these two publishing methods.

If you aren’t releasing it to the world wide, it would actually be considered a “trade secret.” And if nobody knows you know this trade secret, you can’t expect anybody to believe you have it. And then if somebody else comes up with it on their own and you still don’t supply proof, I’m sorry but you don’t have any merit behind whatever claims you are making. Why don’t you just make the proof available if you really want people to believe you.

It’s not enough to leave it up to one person as the be all and end all, take words at face value, resource on all things cardistry, without any dated proof.

This is an authority bias. (Oh if Bob said it, it must be true!) Be careful.

One reason to not publish the moves is to be afraid of other people doing them too. It feels great to be the only person in power and possession of a certain move. To have ownership of it. But then if somebody else comes up with it and publishes it worldwide first, you lose. Wouldn’t it actually make more sense to publish your moves worldwide, with your name on it, for dated historical proof on how you are a creative visionary?

Don’t be all talk. Take action.

The people who are coming up with these moves on their own and releasing them to the world could be commended. From all the published material they can get, they can feel that their move is helping the wider world out.

Now again, I don’t believe everybody should claim credit as originator of a move, and the first person to do it, because you’re not sure whether or not this is true, and you may not have all the resources, even those readily available in Amazon.

But what gets me are these people trying to claim they’ve done things first without showing any documentation for it. Come off and actually distribute your knowledge if you actually have it, and help to improve and enlighten the community.