I suppose christians would have to go to church to have their preacher misinterpret their book of lies instead of having their own copy collecting dust having never been read? So basically nothing changes.
this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2025
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That used to be called Catholicism ^^
Facts. Everything was in Latin so that the layperson could not interpret the scripture.
You don't need IP to know what happens when mythologies are lost. Entire languages along with libraries of stories and myths go extinct all the time.
Well, they can't, because they're already in the public domain and nobody is around who can claim them as an original creation.
If you want this to be some pure hypothetical where that doesn't matter, then... Sure, I guess? That's what intellectual property is.
Well, they can't, because they're already in the public domain and nobody is around who can claim them as an original creation
It worked for "happy birthday", for awhile.
The closest example to this you're likely to find is in the Norse realm where, for example, Neil Gaiman (shitty rapist) packaged up "Norse Mythology" which has his retellings of various found and fabricated stories. All of them have elements from quite old tales but were built out into complete stories by adding details. You can absolutely use the old tales to build your own full stories but there are embellishments added in by the author that are their original work - so derivatives of "Norse Mythology" will likely be discernable and copyright enforceable.
Another big example I can think of is Bram Stoker which would be a nightmare for copyright if he was alive today. So much of what we consider generically vampire is just his creation - but it's so fucking old that all those properties have now become the common mythos and the estate has no right to anything.
And as a last example... you ever wonder why D&D has a race called halflings? It's because they're technically legally distinct Hobbits. The Tolkien estate has been pretty loose with derivative works (a MUD I worked on had special permission to use the setting specifically granted by the estate) but they're sticklers about some things and the word Hobbit (due to the book title) is one thing they're really defensive about.
So my TL;DR is that a mythos can never be privatized but a mythos can be expanded and that expansion can absolutely be a private property. Sorry about using Gaiman as an example but he's literally the only person still alive that I could think to reference.
They are public knowlege. What do you even mean by "using" them?