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.
Is the question regarding intellectual property? Like how Disney guards its various franchises and brands (eg Mickey Mouse)?
We kind of already know what happens in that scenario, but historically – and even Disney has benefitted from this – anything which was part of the unwritten body of mythos was fair-game to use or remix. Modern copyright and trademark laws only affect that which was reduced to a fixed medium, like film or novels. And even then, the standard of originality – in the USA anyway – means that just recording a word-of-mouth story does not imbue a claim to the story itself, but merely its rendition on paper.
As a practical matter, so long as people still talk in-person and share their accounts and experiences, the rich human tradition of storytelling will not end, copyright be darned. If some new legal mechanism is invented to enforce “speaking crimes”, then we’re already zero steps away from an Orwellian nightmare where “thoughtcrime” is prohibited.
Privatized in a way that it will no longer be free to use without getting a license or authorization from a company or other entity.
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.
Is the question regarding intellectual property? Like how Disney guards its various franchises and brands (eg Mickey Mouse)?
We kind of already know what happens in that scenario, but historically – and even Disney has benefitted from this – anything which was part of the unwritten body of mythos was fair-game to use or remix. Modern copyright and trademark laws only affect that which was reduced to a fixed medium, like film or novels. And even then, the standard of originality – in the USA anyway – means that just recording a word-of-mouth story does not imbue a claim to the story itself, but merely its rendition on paper.
As a practical matter, so long as people still talk in-person and share their accounts and experiences, the rich human tradition of storytelling will not end, copyright be darned. If some new legal mechanism is invented to enforce “speaking crimes”, then we’re already zero steps away from an Orwellian nightmare where “thoughtcrime” is prohibited.
Oh like the Catholic church
Not sure I follow
The church essentially took a lot of mythology and folded it into its current form.
There were instances of people being persecuted because of this
People peddling off-brand christianity were hunted down and tortured to death: https://www.history.com/topics/religion/inquisition