Previous civilizations were able to own their cultural myths. Modern civilization's cultural myths are controlled by giant faceless corporations with legions of lawyers. No one can tell a new story about Han, Luke, and Leia without permission from the House of Mouse.
At least in the case of the Maya, literacy was carefully guarded so that a small class of priests could exercise precisely this kind of control. In fact, this is believed to be one of the reasons why modern Mayan languages are written in the Latin alphabet, even though there's a complete Mayan script that was the most developed writing system in the Americas until the conquest.
I still can't believe that everyone alive in the 21st century has been damned to forego a vibrant public domain because some lawyers were afraid Mickey Mouse might fall out of copyright.
Free Culture by Larry Lessig was an excellent book on the subject. He fought the copyright extension in the Supreme Court and founded the Creative Commons. The experience showed him the degree to which money has corrupted the US political system, so he moved his expertise from intellectual property to election reform. He was briefly a protest candidate for president, who vowed to make his reforms and then resign.
Until they are not... it's still permission, instead of 'always allowed'.
I'm quite convinced they will not like it if you make a star-wars themed porn-parody (with the character names as-is) and try marketing it ;)
Lucas was friendly towards fan works, so Disney kind of got that situation handed to them and were smart enough not to go against it. When nerds are your core audience, you have to accept them doing nerd things. WB took down the Hunt for Gollum fan film and ended up reversing course. Would Disney and WB still make a ton of money if they tighten the reins? Probably, but why risk it?
I agree that the way things were along time ago was more natural and definitely more creative. Things today though are way different though. A huge difference is that media wasn’t an industry back then. Most people couldn’t even read. The retelling of myths would mostly happen in the form of poetry or drama performed publicly, and the performance schedule was tightly controlled in the form of contests and festivals to honor various things across the calendar. There’s not really analogue to that now. We are truly in uncharted territory, and that was the case since the printing press. Throw in the invention of the internet and it’s a giant mess. I’m optimistic though that we can resolve it and pave a way forward.
Storytelling was both a profession and an industry in antiquity. Just as rock concerts and bar bands exist today, amphitheaters weren’t the only way people would watch performances.
