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To follow up on a legitimate question from the now-closed thread:
Copyrights are based on public disclosure of the intellectual property you claim as yours. You cannot claim government protection of intellectual property without revealing its contents, at a minimum, to the government. And we know that no group would file its ritual with any government agency. Therefore, it's safe to say that copyright law would not cover any instance of an illicit published ritual.
Hypothetically, groups could oblige their members to sign contracts (in addition to swearing oaths) promising to keep the ritual secret. This would be no different than the gag-rule contracts that are used when lawsuits settle, etc. If the member then revealed any secrets publicly, the member could be sued for breach of contract. But I don't think many groups do this, and at any rate, the penalties for breach of a non-economic contract like that could not be high, because the group probably could not show that it suffered a financial loss as a result of the disclosure.
On top of all this, even if the ritual WERE copyrighted, it is considered fair use to publish excerpts of someone else's copyrighted work within a larger article analyzing the work. In other words, if the Washington Post got ahold of a copyrighted ritual, it would be legal for it to publish an article that stated, "The ritual takes about 45 minutes to recite...Phi Alpha means Friendship Eternal...pledges have to kneel" etc.
So I wouldn't rely on using the law to keep your secrets private. You have to manage privacy issues on your own.
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