Comedians call for better online policing to prevent jokes being stolen

No laughing matter: Keith Chegwin
12 April 2012

Comedians have appealed to internet users to stop spreading their jokes on websites as they fear it "erodes" and "undermines" live shows.

The battle over the publishing of unattributed jokes was sparked when former television presenter Keith Chegwin put a gag from Milton Jones's stand-up routine on Twitter.

Joke website Sickipedia, which up-and-coming comedians use to test out one-liners, said it was "only fair" to always credit gags.

Comedian Mark Watson called for the "policing" of websites such as Twitter. He said: "It is not about being credited financially, but you can't perform a joke if it has gone round the internet, so there should be protection if one comedian passes off another stand-up's work."

Laura Solon, who returns to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe with her show The Owl of Steven next month, believes the passing-off of jokes is a "hazard of being in a modern world".

She said: "It's very difficult to police. You have to hope that professional comics wouldn't do it, that they'd see it as bad form. If you're copying other people's work you're probably not that good anyway."

Comedians make a distinction between a member of the public retelling a joke they have heard at a gig, and someone with a following of thousands tweeting one-liners. Simon Evans, who wrote to Chegwin chiding him over his use of the Jones one-liner, said it was "a Twitter issue, not a joke issue".

Evans, who is performing Fridge Magnet at the Fringe, said: "If you hear a joke in a comedy club, you are likely to repeat it to mates in a pub. If you're tweeting jokes regularly, that's different."

He believes that the "retweet" function on Twitter, which credits comments to the original author, is "universally understood" and said crediting jokes is about a "sense of decency". He said a law protecting jokes would be going too far, but it was crucial that people abide by a "gentleman's agreement".

"If you go to a comedy club and you've already seen the jokes on Twitter it undermines the comedian," he said. "We need to get these rules sorted and then co-exist."

Comedian Dan Antopolski, who had to drop a one-liner from his set after it went viral on the internet when he won the best joke award at the 2009 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, said publishing jokes "erodes the show" and "at the very minimum it requires a change in etiquette".

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