In the current age of digital social media, Humour industry, particularly Stand-up comedy is a booming sector. The Internet has empowered several artists to showcase their skills like never before. In the classical times stand-up comedians were looked upon as 'fillers' however, taking a look at some recent years, India has witnessed a massive escalation of the humour industry. As this sector get more professionalized, it becomes imminent to understand the Intellectual Property (hereinafter “IP”) regimes governing the jokes, particularly with plagiarism which is now a major issue on social media taking a hold over this sector.
As far as the early 20th century, jokes mainly comprised of one-liners which were considered to be the common property. However, creation of jokes itself gained importance in the later years. This can be credited to the market where the competition placed a greater significance to not just the performance but also to the content creation. Therefore earlier, it was not difficult to recognize the plagiarism, however the jokes, which earlier were one-liners, now were divided into elaborate set-ups and comprised of punch lines. More and more comedians started experimenting with the art, wherein they started taking inspirations from their own lives & describing occurrences which they have seen, using the same as a premise, thereby, making it difficult to point out plagiarised content.
Plagiarism in stand-up comedy is not new, as many reputed stand-up comics in the past have been accused of plagiarism. The term “joke theft” is qualifies as extremely subjective among the comics. For example, topics such as sardars, husband-wife dramas, engineers etc are quite common among the Indian audience. Now, reasonable adaptation around these premises may be considered fine, however identical punchlines without any permission or not giving credit to the original creator, would be fit to considered as a 'joke theft' or plagiarism.
It is extremely important to understand that a joke, like a poem or a story is also essentially a literary creation. Therefore, fit to qualify for copyright protection at least in theory. However, theoretical protection is not sufficient to sustain a legal claim. This is because the Copyright law protects the expression and not the idea. Be it not through the Copyright law, yet the issue of ‘joke theft’ has been brought up in front of courts through several different forms. Cases have been filed under the claim of misleading advertisements similarly the tort of passing off may be said to be claimed in case of one-liner jokes, if that one liner can be proved to be plagiarised. There has been one such successful claim made in the case of Foxworthy v. Custom Tees, Inc. (879 F. Supp. 1200 (N.D. Ga. 1995)).
The field of Academics has several systems in existence to ensure the originality of a work. For example, the authors have to cite all sources & references, along with their own name to ensure that the hard work of all the people involved whether directly or indirectly, does not go unacknowledged. Further, there exist several online tools in order to check whether someone is trying to take any undue credit by using plagiarised content.
However, as far as stand-up comedy is concerned there are no such methods to be found. It is to be understood that a comedian may take up to a year to write content for an hour-long show. Unfortunately, not many people value the effort which goes into writing a joke, as it may seem like a simple compilation of words compared to the complicated nature of research papers, music notes, inventions, art etc.
Similarly, with the increasing number of comic artists popular today, giving a due credit is tough because of the advancement in the technology resulting similar joke being shared by several people, making it extremely difficult to trace the origin of the joke. Furthermore, there arise several instances of jokes being circulated on WhatsApp which later turn into popular viral content. Therefore, it becomes nearly impossible to determine & settle upon an ownership of a joke, resulting into high plagiarism in the sphere of comedy.
In 2017, a famous comedian Kapil Sharma was accused by another Indian stand-up comedian Abhijit Ganguly of plagiarism. It was alleged by him that Kapil Sharma and his team had stolen a joke from his video which was uploaded by him just a few days before the telecast of Kapil's show.
Copyright laws are the most effective to protect ownership in original & literary creations without a doubt however, it is extremely unfortunate that they cannot be utilised in the field of humour. A slightly modified & a rewritten version of a joke is more than enough to steal the essence of the original. Similarly, it may be tough for a court to distinguish between plagiarized jokes & jokes which have a similar premise as it may be possible for people to have similar ideas, which can result into similar jokes. Another important concern for the comic artists is the costs which are attached with litigation.
In a research paper titled ‘There’s No Free Laugh (Anymore): The Emergence of Intellectual Property Norms and the Transformation of Stand-Up Comedy’, one can find a system of IP norms highlighted through which comic artists protect their jokes. These norms manage to regulate issues such as ownership, authorship, transfer of rights & the imposition of sanctions on those who violate the norms with respect to a ‘joke theft’. For example, if a comedian is known for stealing a joke, the comedy community which includes the comics as well as performance clubs get together to impose a public shaming and boycott.
So far, these norms have successfully managed to restrict the amount of joke theft today, and resulted the curation of original works to increased substantially. However, there lies a responsibility upon us as an audience to reject plagiarized content for the sake of encouraging original content creators because it is more than just hard work for a comedian.
The Link LonkMay 06, 2021 at 01:15AM
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'Joke Theft': Not a joke. - Lexology
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