Can you steal jokes, or is it forgery?

The difference between a truth and an idea is its independence from its bearer. An idea is private while a truth is public. An artist creates ideas and can own the final product. That product is the artists rendition of the world as they see it. A comedian, on the other hand, points to truths and contradictions that make us laugh but it is impossible to own the truth of the joke because it is independent of the comic and the way it is delivered. A comedian is as much of a philosopher as they are an artist. The only ownership that comes from a joke is the way it is delivered, which gives it a unique signature. If two comics delivered the same truth differently, whoever said it second is accused of stealing it. If the ownership is in the signature of the joke, it's not stealing a joke if the second comic had a different delivery. They just discovered the same truth/contradiction at different times, independently of each other. If the delivery was the same, and the second knew about the joke, then it was forgery. There are few ways of writing the premise of a truth, analytically, but there are many ways of writing a premise of a joke artistically.