Simple query. I was just thinking randomly about some vaguely related stuff and I started to wonder about the idea of someone using Hypno-tan in their paid works.

I know it might seem like a nigh-ridiculous question but I still find myself at loss of the implications and consequences were anyone ever to use this character as their own in a more legitimate media beyond the internet where they were to effectively make money off of the Hub's Mascot, Hypno-tan.

Does anyone care to shed a bit of light on this?

im like 90% sure hypno-tan is public domain

This is a totally reasonable question, but I'm not quite sure of the answer. It's great that you had the foresight to ask, though, as copyright laws surrounding stuff like this can be muddy to say the least. For example, as someone who's been in the creepypasta/internet horror community for quite a while and has seen the drama that's gone down in recent years (Vena Cava's trademark shenanigans, The Purity Sinners, etc), I can definitely tell you that characters in more 'open-source' communties, if you will (not sure how else to phrase it) being used in higher-level artistic work or for profit in general can be a tricky topic. I'd imagine it's a similar deal with the Hub community, just, you know, instead of literature, it's art.

Forgive the fairly distant comparison, haha

Considering the stuff I'm working on, this is a little concerning to me too.

Copyright is implicitly obtained when you create a work. The work can be released into the public domain or under a 'copyleft' license or similar, but this needs to be declared explicitly, or else it falls under default copyright rules.

So yes, whoever created hypno-tan holds a copyright to the character.

Hypno-tan was created as a joint effort between members of the defunct Hypnochan site. It's unclear who, if anyone, created her, since multiple artists drew concept sketches based on user input that eventually shaped into what we know today as Hypno-tan.

Please. Hypno-Tan belongs to whoever is holding the pendulum in front of her at the moment.

gotta admit that was clever.

If no one has a record of who explicitly drew/said what and the entire timeline (which is pretty likely at this point), my gut says given the circumstances it'd probably be treated as an anonymous/pseudonymous work if it came down to something legal.

www.digitisingmorgan.org/...us%20works_DigiMorgan.pdf

tl;dr if the answer is "nobody knows", then the law considers the actual answer to be "Hypnochan Co. (since it acted as publisher) until evidence arises otherwise". Functionally speaking though, I believe "hypnochan co." could only weakly enforce/exploit only some of the rights associated with copyright since an attempt to enforce much beyond a C&D/takedown would be viewed as "you certainly conveniently decided to lose information that would give you a copyright to something you otherwise wouldn't have".

Back in the hypnobooru days, it was a thread of artists bouncing ideas to see which would stick, shooting out concepts left and right. I know I atleast helped in regards to Hypno-tan's swirly breasted sweater to some extent. Though my earliest recollection of Hypnotan would have to be hypnofood's incarnations of the character.

You're correct. Hypnofood was the first, as far as I can tell, who drew the more or less final design of Hypno-tan. You are the first person I can remember drawing her shirt with the spirals. The drawing of Hypno-tan that was used to represent her for the longest time was made by KinkyLoli.