Exploring the implications of copyright law for the families of deceased authors, readers and performers alike.
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Dr Matthew Rimmer has been exploring the legal afterlife of James Joyce.
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“The artist, like the God of Creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.”
(James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man)
The writing of Irish author James Joyce has delighted and baffled readers for generations. The characters of his books have taken on significance and fame that extends well beyond the covers of a novel, appearing in plays, films and other literary works as well as everyday life – many an Irish pub around the world is named “Molly Bloom’s” after the character in Ulysses. Now Joyce is increasingly turning up in another guise as his works, name and characters take centre stage in legal debates about copyright.
Dr Matthew Rimmer from the ANU College of Law has been exploring the implications of the legal furore surrounding Joyce’s estate. He says the legal battle came to a head in 2004 when the Irish government planned to mark the one-hundredth anniversary of Bloomsday – 16 June, the day on which Ulysses takes place – with a major celebration.
“The festival ReJoyce Dublin 2004 featured a smorgasbord of exhibitions, lectures, performances, events and walking tours,” Rimmer says. “The National Library of Dublin presented the centrepiece exhibition, James Joyce and Ulysses, at the National Library of Ireland. Highlights included rare manuscripts such as a signed copy of the first edition of Ulysses published in 1922, Joyce’s notebooks of Ulysses and the fair copy manuscript of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The Irish Museum of Modern Art staged High Falutin Stuff, an exhibition of art inspired by Joyce. University College Dublin offered a range of academic lectures on the life and work of Joyce. The Nineteenth Annual International James Joyce Symposium brought many of the finest Joyce scholars from around the world to Dublin. The festival re-released Bloom, a film adaptation of Joyce’s masterpiece. There were also walking tours around key locations featured in the novel Ulysses.”
But a copyright directive from the European Union had been issued in 1994 that extended the length of copyright from life of the author plus 50 years to life of the author plus 70 years.
“Joyce’s work had fallen into the public domain and anyone could use it. With the directive and the term extension, the work of James Joyce suddenly came back into copyright protection in the European Union,” Rimmer says.
That directive allowed the Joyce estate to then seek to exercise copyright by preventing Bloomsday activities that involved Joyce’s work from going ahead.
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“I guess it highlights the impact of the copyright extension on libraries, public institutions and performing arts companies."
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“The grandson of the novelist, Stephen Joyce, argued that the James Joyce and Ulysses exhibition staged by the National Library of Ireland could breach copyright by displaying manuscripts and draft notebooks by Joyce. So in other words he was claiming that the rights vested in the estate extended to exhibiting manuscripts that were written by Joyce.”
The estate also threatened to sue the Irish government for breach of copyright if there were any public readings or recitations as part of ReJoyce Dublin 2004. Other organisations planning to use Joyce’s words as part of their celebrations were warned they could face legal action and Joyce’s grandson rejected a proposal by the Abbey Theatre to stage Joyce’s play Exiles.
Rimmer says that the Irish Parliament rushed through emergency legislation to safeguard the celebrations. “The legislation clarified that a person could place literary and artistic works on public exhibition without breaching the copyright vested in such cultural texts.”
However, Rimmer argues that the Irish legislation does not go far enough because the Joyce estate “remains free to exercise its suite of economic and moral rights to control the use and adaptation of works of the Irish novelist”.
“I guess it highlights the impact of the copyright extension on libraries, public institutions and performing arts companies. It also raises wider issues about adaptations of works, transformation of works and derivative works, because copyright extends not only to the reproduction of work but also to adapting work,” he says.
“The interesting thing about the Joyce estate is that it has been very keen to prevent any derivative works being made from the Joyce’s work. You could contrast it with Disney, which has some very old copyrights on things like Mickey Mouse and tries to create as many derivative products as possible, down to key rings and videos and DVDs. But the Joyce estate is a little bit different: it’s much more concerned about jealously protecting Joyce’s work and not allowing it to be commercialised, commodified or popularised.
Rimmer says that Australian lovers of Joyce have greater legal freedoms to make new works that reference the work of the Irish master. Although copyright law in this country has been brought into line with that of the United States under the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement, extending copyright to the life of the author plus 70 years, this will not apply to work already in the public domain. Bloomsday in Australia, at least, will continue to be a rich homage to a much-loved writer.
“This Bloomsday in 2006, Carol Loeb Schloss, the biographer of Lucia Joyce, brought a legal action in a Californian District Court against the Joyce estate, seeking a declaration that her use of Joyce’s published and unpublished works on a scholarly website was protected by the defence of fair use. The case will have wide ramifications for biographers, scholars, anthologists, librarians, and curators who use the copyright work of authors.”
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