Over on Facebook, Kenton is going on and on about 100th Monkey ripping of his Sign Of Influence effect with no credit or permission. I own 100th but not signs. Love the idea of 100th Monkey and the description of Kentons effect sounds similar. Obviously without owning both, I can't be sure they both use the same method. Does anyone have any insight to this?

Just a quick comment that Alchemy Moon's "Hypnocard" came out before SOI. Chris and I even wrote to Kenton about it. SOI is closer to Hypnocard than it is to 100th.

Of course I like Hypnocard, but I also like SOI and 100th Monkey. If you like one, you'll like the others. You just have to do a little research and see which one blows your hair back the most.

Effects similar to 100th pre-dated 100th... which Chris P mentions I recall.

If you do a Google search you will find many images which use this technique - and I 100% guarantee Kenton didn't invent it either.

Chris genius was taking it to many new levels.

It's interesting to watch and analyze Ego In Action. Watch a little, see a lot.

I fully agree with Brett.

Best,

Atlas

Thanks, Brett, Tom and Atlas. Atlas, btw, is one of the people I mention in the credits section of the 100th Monkey releases for working with some of these ideas before I did. Though we've never met in person, his gracious reaction to my own work via email is something I try to emulate.

Kenton has removed his FB post - I've asked him to remove references to the 100th Monkey from his ad copy for SOI and hoping he will do so soon. I addressed this issue on my Facebook page yesterday and I'm really hoping this is an end to the matter.

On the subject of crediting/inventing - I have to ask...

Phil - did you get permission from the photographer, David Slater to use his photo for 100th Monkey? that's not an accusation, I just wondered...

Hey Iain, not sure about that specific photo, but all photos were obtained on websites with Creative Commons Licenses and given photo credit on a jpeg labelled photo credits on the dvd.

Aaaaah...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie

I witnessed the brainstorming session where the scientific aspects were explored by Phil and others and was amazed how Phil's genius creatively found a way to treat words in a special way. It can not be compared to SOI as 100th's modus operandi is scientific and not based on conventional easy to implement or older magical methods.

It would be like saying some one stole the ideas of a forcing deck (it is not a force) because it does the same thing a classic force does. They really are apples and oranges!

Iain, Ah! The famous monkey selfie - that's the shot you're talking about. Yes, I only picked those shots after the initial legal discussion that concluded that a monkey couldn't hold copyright. Didn't imagine it would be mired in litigation for years. Been watching the court rulings eagerly. So far, they've been saying the pictures are copyright-free, but I understand the photographer has just sued Wikipedia. I may be next!

Thank you, gphrenol!

Whatever the legal niceties, if the photographer is not happy that his creations are in the public domain, surely the classy thing to do would be to respect his wishes?

I think the dispute, TonyB, is that the monkey took the pictures. As such, the monkey is the creator of the image and (to my knowledge) has not expressed his or her opinion on the topic. The owner of the photography equipment is claiming copyright (on what legal basis, if any, is unclear). It'll be interesting to follow the legalities.

According to U.S. copyrighting practice, where there is no contribution by a human creator, the work cannot be copyrighted. I think the owner argues that his provision and setup of the equipment, intention for the monkeys to use it in the way they did, etc. constitutes a requisite degree of human authorship for the purposes of copyright.

Interesting to compare this to "camera-trapping", whereby cameras are triggered to take photos by the movement, sound, etc. of wildlife. These images appear to be copyrighted in at least some cases. Unsure of the differences case by case ..

In this case it is quite clear that the monkey did not hop into Walmart and buy a camera. The entire thing was set up by the photographer. Whether he presses the button with his finger, his nose, the tip of an umbrella, or a passing monkey doesn't change that.

By the way, this is not an attack on Chris, who used the photograph in the genuine belief that copyright was not a problem. And I think he produced a great effect in 100th Monkey.

Thanks, Tony.

On the monkey selfie, in the stuff I first read, he said the photos were an accident ( https://www.techdirt.com/articles/201107......os.shtml ) and only much later I read that he says he had set the whole thing up. Obviously, this makes a big difference -- if it's an accident, that he put down his camera and when he picked it up later there was a cool picture on it, well, to call him the creator of that picture is to water down the term to the point where it's meaningless. If he set it up hoping to capture the picture, that's something else entirely. When I chose this picture the story, law and ethics of it were pretty clear -- this pic was public domain. Since then, things have gotten murkier (though the law is still clear). Still, I've been phasing out the monkey image in my releases -- you'll see an ad in the new Magic magazine for an upcoming 100th Monkey effect and the monkey is nowhere to be seen. But it's late in the day to try to rebrand the original release without major expense so it'll stay unless the legal status of the photo changes.

Magicians are connected to the name '100th Monkey', not that particular photo, so changing that wouldn't be an issue at all. A picture of a mass of monkeys, with one in red, or highlighted would hove the same effect...and while the current pic is clever and most beautiful, it's not critical to anything. Sail on.

Agreed - its not critical, I just thought it was pertinent to the main thrust of this thread about (re)invention, crediting and so on...it made me curious and I'd read an article about the photo in question on the bbc site, got me thinking...

Well, it's not a bad idea and it's certainly something I've thought about, since you never know which way the case will eventually go, but it's not quite as simple as changing the cover on the box. At this point, I have no idea all the places the 100th Monkey is being sold (it's in 13 languages) and the owners have little to no motivation for changing the artwork on their sites. I figured the only way to do it would be to release a 100th Monkey 2.0, and make the original unavailable -- that way most of those old pages would have to come down and the new one put up to replace them. Then I can also transition the branding with some advertising. Kicking some ideas around for what that might be, but nothing clear in my mind yet.

This just posted a few days ago on FB re: the Copyright decision:

http://secondnexus.com/ecology-and-susta......a3a463e1

Rest easy....it's public domaine.