| 27th May 2004 |
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| Irish Government Faces Down James Joyce Estate |
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The James Joyce Estate's reign of terror over Joyceans may be about to end as the Irish Government brings emergency legislation to the Seanad today in order to ensure that a major exhibition of James Joyce's work at the National Library is not blocked by a dispute over copyright.
The library had intended to display more than 500 pages of Joyce's work, bought by the government for € 12.6 million, to celebrate Bloomsday 2004 but these plans were thrown into disarray when Stephen Joyce appeared on the scene and started to make claims about copyright infringement.
Copyright on works by James Joyce ran out on December 31st 1991, fifty years after the author's death. However, European Union regulations revived copyright from July 1995 when it extended the period of copyright to seventy years after the death of the author.
This extension of copyright has been a windfall for The Joyce Estate and become the bane of Joyceans around the world who are threatened with legal action for any perceived infraction whatsoever.
To date, planned readings and stagings of Joyce's work to celebrate Bloomsday by both RTE and The Abbey, have been shelved because of the veto exercised by the Joyce Estate.
It is an exceptional development for the government to alter Ireland's copyright law in order to deal with the problems being caused by a single party. This change to existing legislation by the government is nothing less than a clear sign to the Joyce Estate that their salad days are over and the dismantling of their veto is about to begin. If the James Joyce Estate thinks that they can remain in a position of any kind of influence with regard to matters Joycean, we direct their attention to The Broadcasting (Major Events Television Coverage) Act, 1999 which was introduced to protect the 'Free To Air' broadcasts of major sporting events on television in the wake of a deal between the FAI and Sky Television.
As Machiavelli warned in 'The Prince', when the private individual attempts to interfere with the public business of The State, the result is always that the private individual is crushed by The State. |
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