U.Va. News reports on a study of copyright, social norms and stand-up comedy:
In part, it was a viral video of two well-known comedians hurling
obscenities at each other that prompted a pair of University of
Virginia law professors to take a serious look at how professional comics protect themselves from joke theft.
In February 2007, stand-up comedians Joe Rogan and Carlos Mencia
squared off on stage at a prominent Los Angeles comedy club after Rogan
accused Mencia — whom he dubbed "Carlos Menstealia" — of pilfering
material from other comedians. A video of the altercation garnered more
than 2 million views online and countless mentions on blogs and Web
sites.
"The two of them had an almost physical fight on stage where they were
yelling at each other about the accusation of joke stealing, and Mencia
was denying it," said Chris Sprigman, who with faculty colleague Dotan
Oliar authored an upcoming Virginia Law Review article, "There's No
Free Laugh (Anymore): The Emergence of Intellectual Property Norms and
the Transformation of Stand-Up Comedy."
The Mencia-Rogan argument led the two intellectual property law
scholars to an interesting question: With scant legal protection for
their work — copyright law plays little role in comedy — why are
stand-up comedians willing to invest time and energy developing
routines that could be stolen without legal penalty?
After almost a year of research that included interviews with comedians
ranging from comedy club circuit neophytes to seasoned veterans of
television specials, Oliar and Sprigman found that the world of
stand-up comedy has a well-developed system of social norms designed to
protect original jokes — and that the system functions as a stand-in
for copyright law.
"Most of our research over the last year has been trying to piece
together all the attributes of this system that comedians have started
up and run for themselves," Sprigman said.
In their paper, published in the December edition of the Virginia Law
Review, Oliar and Sprigman identify several of the informal rules that
govern stand-up comedy.
...
For Sprigman and Oliar, the study of stand-up comedy has ramifications
for the larger world of intellectual property law, or the body of law
that protects creative works through devices such as patents,
trademarks and copyrights.
The underpinning of such law is the notion that without it, theft would
be so rampant that there would be no incentive to create or innovate,
Oliar said.
"For us, the most salient observation is that the law has not done the
job of protecting jokes, but the joke market has not failed. The market
is substituting this set of informal rules for the formal ones, and as
far as we can see it's doing a pretty good job," Sprigman said.
...
Both men stressed that joke theft is not common in the world of
stand-up comedy, and that most comedians pride themselves on creating
original material.
One potential downside to the social norm system as opposed to formal
legal protection is that social norms might not be effective at
punishing comedians who get to the top of the field, they said.
"If a successful comedian doesn't care too much about the community's
feelings toward him, then he's hard to discipline," Sprigman said. "But
keep in mind that the formal law doesn't always work either. There are
all kinds of copyright rules that apply to the music industry, but
there are millions of people illegally downloading songs.
"There's always a slippage between the law on the books, or the rules
in the norms system, and the ability of these rules to be enforced."
Read more here.
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