I think of the code of honour in Stand-Up comedy. Appropriating another's jokes is considered the ultimate sin. And the other comics close ranks and shame the joke-stealer. Yes, audience members don't get it, but it's serious business in the world of jokes.

Appropriation is taking something for one's own use without the owner's permission. Who does one approach for that permission? If there's a copyright holder, that's easy to answer. If it's a culture, well, one has to feel them out.

William Henry Drummond is Canada's most famous poet you never heard of. A hundred years ago he was in much demand for his Habitant poems. He wrote dialect poems in the voice of illiterate Quebeckers. Some humorous, some melancholy. Drummond was Irish. He worried he was being insulting, but the Quebecois poet Louis-Honore Frechette assured him he was not. Alas, history has past another judgement on Drummond's shtick.

It's a lot like the offside rule in soccer. It isn't an offence, except when it is.