Can you copyright a joke?

For all you basketball fans, you might have heard Washing Wizards point guard and all-around showman Gilbert Arenas received some fire lately for - wait for it. Stealing and taking credit for a joke on his blog. He wrote, what seemed like an extemporaneous post on his blog about Shark attacks. It went something like this:

There Are No Such Thing as Shark Attacks
I know this is random, but I just want to clear this up for people out there.

There are these things called shark attacks, but there is no such thing as a shark attack. I have never seen a real shark attack.

I know you’re making a weird face as you’re reading this. OK people, a shark attack is not what we see on TV and what people portray it as.

We’re humans. We live on land.

Sharks live in water.

So if you’re swimming in the water and a shark bites you, that’s called trespassing. That is called trespassing. That is not a shark attack.

A shark attack is if you’re chilling at home, sitting on your couch, and a shark comes in and bites you; now that’s a shark attack. Now, if you’re chilling in the water, that is called invasion of space. So I have never heard of a shark attack.

When I see on the news where it’s like, “There have been 10 shark attacks,” I’m like, “Hey, for real?! They’re just running around? Sharks are walking now, huh! We live on the land, we don’t live underwater.”

Read Arenas' blog here

It turns out it was ripped off a comedian and he has since been asked to come clean. In true Arenas' fashion, he was defiant and come out swinging. In his own jocular way:

Hear Me Out
Yeah, you’ve all been talking about it. I used someone else’s joke. What’s the big deal? I thought it was funny, I blogged it, you all laughed.

Mission accomplished.

Listen, nobody even heard of Ian Edwards before me. He’s no Chris Rock. I helped him become famous. Now everybody is going to YouTube and looking him up.

The joke was worth about $7 when I heard it, now that I’ve used it’s probably worth a little bit more. I’ll sell it back to him for $7.78. Seventy-eight cents, Ian, you can put that in a royalties check made out to me.

Puffy and Ashanti made careers out of stealing other people’s beats. This is America, the land of the reused.

Read the full transcript on Arenas' blog.

This brings me to another comedy thief. Alleged. Carlos Mencia is an infamous Comic who has his own show on Comedy Central, Mind of Mencia. He has been accused of stealing jokes, recently he was publicly called out by fellow TV personality and comedian, Joe Rogan.
See the video for yourself: Awkward!