[1] See Chapter XXIV, Manuscripts and Markets.

The infringer--who steals gags and points bodily--can be pursued
and punished under the copyright law, but the chooser is a kind
of sneak thief who works gags and points around to escape taking
criminal chances, making his material just enough different to
evade the law. A chooser damages the originator of the material
without himself getting very far. No one likes a chooser; no one
knowingly will have dealings with a chooser. Call a vaudeville
man a liar and he may laugh at you--call him a chooser and you'll
have to fight him.

There are, of course, deliberate choosers in the vaudeville business,
just as there are "crooks" in every line of life, but they never
make more than a momentary success. Here is why they invariably
fail:

When you sit in the audience, and hear an old gag or point, you
whisper, "Phew, that's old," or you give your companion a knowing
look, don't you? Well, half the audience is doing the very same
thing, and they, like you, receive the impression that all the
gags are old, and merely suppose that they haven't heard the other
ones before.

The performer, whose bread and butter depends on the audience
thinking him bright, cannot afford to have anything ancient in his
routine. Two familiar gags or points will kill at least twenty-five
percent of his applause. He may not get even one bow, and when
audiences do not like a monologist well enough to call him out for