How many utils do you get from making a joke that gets the whole room laughing? Thinking about the value of a joke helped me find some interesting articles around the web.
The economics of jokes is an interesting market. This planet money episode talks about the market for jokes, and the intellectual property challenges that the internet brings up. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/04/06/710404524/episode-904-joke-theft
The planet money episode talks about joke theft interviewing Christopher Sprigman who wrote: “There’s No Free Laugh (Anymore): The Emergence of Intellectual Property Norms and the Transformation of Stand-Up Comedy”. This episode talks about how copywriting is very expensive and not very enforceable so many choose not to copywriter jokes. They talk about some of the “sanctions” that the comedians have put in place to stop theft.
This mental floss episode talks about some instances of comics stealing jokes. http://mentalfloss.com/article/24305/not-so-funny-look-6-comedians-accused-plagiarism Similarly, this vulture article compares clips of comedians https://www.vulture.com/2017/02/10-comedians-who-borrowed-jokes-without-making-headlines.html
This vice article is about Conan O’Brien joke stealing a suit of 600,000. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiqZoE_FRFI