Law and Magic Blog

"(Don't) Take My Joke--Please!"--Comedians, Copyright, and Technology

Stand up comics in the UK aren't laughing about the way their best jokes are losing their punch, thanks to the new technology--websites and Twitter. Entertainers like Gary Delaney say good material is being disseminated rapidly via these means, and the result is that after potential audiences have already heard it, it's not funny when the originator tells it during his or her act. Some comics complain to websites that post what they think is infringing material. Others take matters into their own hands (usually not a good move).

As in the U.S., British law normally requires that material be "fixed in a tangible medium" in order for it to be copyrighted, hence the advice from an IP attorney that "the comedians to write down their material, say what date they wrote it on and stick it on their computer so they had some evidence. [Then they have a script of some kind, and if there's a bit of ad-libbing then that's fine, because the test for copyright is if it's substantially the same."

Comedians also say that they've been accused of plagiarizing their own work, because some audience members think that they've copied more famous artists, when it's the artist, or his/her writer who's actually copying the less famous entertainer. The result? Heckling from the gallery.

All of this will sound familiar to magicians, I'm guessing. We've discussed protecting original work, and the limitations of copyright law to do just that including in a previous post here and here (where the Brits weigh in). 

 

The Failure of Psychic Detection

From Benjamin Radford on LiveScience, "Jaycee Dugard Abduction Case Highlights Failure of Psychics."

Tanzanian Court Sentences Four To Death For Witchcraft Killings

A Tanzanian court has handed out a death sentence to four persons convicted of murdering albino individuals for their body parts. Some people believe albino body parts can be used in charms by witch doctors to bring good luck.

The death sentences are the second handed down in trials conducted in Tanzania over this kind of murder. Last September the same court sentenced three to death by hanging for the same crime. Read more here, and read more here and here in previous posts about killings of those murdered for body parts in Tanzania and other countries.

Will Health Care Insurance Plans Include Complementary/Alternative Medicine Coverage?

So, have you thought about whether any of the health care bills would require that insurance plans cover alternative or complementary medical treatments? No? Check out this story from Newsweek magazine, which suggests that the CAM lobby has already made its arguments to the Hill.

Requiring insurers to cover therapies with unknown outcomes runs counter to the White House's push for medicine with a proven track record. The basic idea behind evidence-based medicine is that doctors ought to use treatments that have the best possible evidence that they work. What counts as the best possible evidence? Randomized clinical trials.... Clinical trials work fine for drugs, where trials can quantify and compare outcomes. But for alternative treatments, things like prayer or even yoga, the evidence gets much less clear; randomized trials are more difficult to conduct. "For drugs you have placebos and double-blinded studies," says Timmermans. "But you cannot have a placebo for testing behavioral interventions." So alternative treatments are essentially on an uneven playing field when it comes to evidence-based medicine. Timmermans admits that "it's not an equal-opportunity methodology."

...

Requiring insurers to cover prayer treatment may be a bit too extreme for health-care reform. More interesting to explore though, are other forms of nontraditional medicine, floated in reform bills, that have a stronger claim to an evidence base. Take, for example, complementary and alternative medicine, a field often criticized for unproven therapies. Some 38 percent of Americans use some form of it. Moreover, the field has increasingly embraced traditional research methods. Just a decade ago, the government established a National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. The center studies "alternative healing practices"—anything from the use of echinacea to treat colds, to acupuncture for irritable bowel syndrome—"in the context of rigorous science." They use that gold standard Timmermans mentioned: randomized, clinical trials.

Here's a link to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

Now, I admit to practicing yoga, off and on, and I think (I think) it helps me feel less stress and it helps me calm down after a long day of magical legalizing. I know it helps my flexibility, but then so would, I suspect, going back to my ballet exercises. I do feel better when I downward dog and make like a tree, even though I don't Om. It annoys the felines. But I don't try to bill my health insurance company for my trips to the yoga studio. I'm not certain there's cause and effect there. Hey, I tried feverfew for my migraines, too, but I didn't see any amelioration there. Zippo. One of my primary care physicians explained that outcome--there's no quality control in the feverfew you buy OTC. Better to rely on the meds the neurologist prescribes, and mirabile dictu, my migraines have decreased significantly over the past few years. Hooray for modern medicine and Big Pharma (waving imaginary flag).

Jacob Loshin Discusses "Crush Videos" (U.S. v. Stevens)

Lawyer/magician Jacob Loshin discusses the recently argued case United States v. Stevens here. The case involves free speech and animal cruelty, specifically "crush videos."

Magical Internet Thinking

From PC Magazine, "10 Most Heinous Hoaxes on the net." Some of them appeal to magical thinking, like the "we captured BigFoot and we've got him in a freezer" hoax. The one about legislatively setting the value of pi to 3? Here's the text of that Indiana bill. Some of the other hoaxes listed are no laughing matter, such as the one that led to the suicide of young Megan Meier. Federal prosecutors charged Lori Drew, one of the people behind that hoax, under the Computer Fraud and Abuse act. A jury found her guilty of three misdemeanor counts, but a judge threw out the verdict this year.

"Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been?" "I Refuse To Answer On the Grounds..."

A Time magazine article from October 26, 1953 highlights "fourteen magic words": "I refuse to answer upon the ground that it might tend to incriminate me."

They became magic words in this country in a famous Supreme Court case, Blau v. United States (340 U.S. 159 (1950)). ( and see related Blau v. United States, 340 U.S. 332 (1951)). In that case, an individual refused to answer questions, asserting that to do so would result in self-incrimination. The Court agreed with her, ruling that "Whether such admissions by themselves would support a conviction under a criminal statute is immaterial. Answers to the questions asked by the grand jury would have furnished a link in the chain of evidence needed in a prosecution of petitioner for violation of (or conspiracy to violate) the Smith Act. Prior decisions of this Court have clearly established that under such circumstances, the Constitution gives a witness the privilege of remaining silent. The attempt by the courts below to compel petitioner to testify runs counter to the Fifth Amendment as it has been interpreted from the beginning....Reversed."

Even as we value the right of silence under our Constitution, this right is being limited elsewhere, most particularly in England and Wales. The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, passed in 1994, discusses inferences that may be made concerning an accused's silence (sections 34-39).

Minnesota Teen Finishes Chemo Treatments, Is Doing Well

Daniel Hauser, the Minnesota teenager who left the state in May accompanied by his mother rather than undergo court-ordered chemotherapy, preferring a course of alternative medicine, then returned, has finished his radiation treatments, and is doing well, according to his physicians and his family. His parents believe that alternative medical treatments have also helped him. Read more here in an article dated September 4, 2009, from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

Some Magic on "Drop Dead Diva"

In "Grayson's Anatomy," tonight's final episode of the season for the series Drop Dead Diva, the protagonist, attorney Jane Bingum (Brooke Elliot) dreams that she is the star witness in a showdown between the two men who attract her most: colleagues Grayson Kent (Jackson Hurst) and Tony Nicastro (David Denman). Paula Abdul, presiding as the judge, calls on each man to demonstrate why he should win Jane's heart. Tony dances--one interpretation of what lawyers do. But Grayson breaks a magic wand and makes scarves appear. Of course Judge Abdul announces she'll give her ruling after the break, and then Jane wakes up.

This comedy is fun to watch; it takes on real issues of ethics and hot button legal issues, and includes a little of the supernatural, since Jane harbors the reincarnation of dead model Deb, Grayson's fiancee. Lawyers, models, and the afterlife--something for everyone.

Law and Magic In New Orleans

From New Orleans Magazine, May 2009: this interesting piece by Carolyn Kolb on magicians in the City That Care Forgot. Ms. Kolb notes that a local judge helped test Harry Houdini's escape skills, and that local lawyer Lawrence "Cadillac" Smith put himself through Loyola Law School with money he made as a magician. Read more here.