Author Writing Biography About James Joyce's Daughter Allowed To Quote James Joyce's Daughter

from the fair-use-it-is dept

Mon, Mar 26th 2007 7:41pm — Mike Masnick

It really is amazing how far some people try to stretch copyright law beyond its intended purpose. A Stanford professor was writing a biography of Lucia Joyce, the daughter of author James Joyce -- but apparently the Joyce family wasn't too happy about it and used copyright law to threaten the author with using any quote from anything written either by Lucia Joyce or James Joyce. That seems to go very much against the purpose of copyright law and, specifically, fair use rules. A lawsuit ensued and Larry Lessig points out that the estate of James Joyce, apparently upon learning how copyright law works, has settled the case and allowed the author to use the content in her book. The fact that she even had to go through this process should be seen as a problem -- and as an example of how copyright holders today keep trying to stretch their rights way beyond what is both intended and allowed under the law.

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Frank, 26 Mar 2007 @ 8:03pm

I have found that, even with this great Apple TV we still need a video converter (things like Apple TV Converter) in case to put our favourite movies onto Apple TV before playing them on TV Screen.

My apple tv converter
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Derrick Hinkle, 26 Mar 2007 @ 8:37pm

Idiot.
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Anonymous Poster (profile), 26 Mar 2007 @ 8:52pm

Freaking morons. I really wish some lawsuits would get thrown out the first day they come to court on the basis that they're frivolous and retarded.
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Animositas, 27 Mar 2007 @ 2:20am

Not quite the whole story
As an American living in Dublin I was surprised to read this in the local papers. What they reported, and I haven't seen any mention of it either in your report or the linked article, is that the professor can publish her work, but only in America. The deal specifically prohibits publication outside of the U.S.

Nice work Joyce family!
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MadJo (profile), 27 Mar 2007 @ 2:40am

Re: Not quite the whole story
The deal specifically prohibits publication outside of the U.S.

There is of course Amazon.com ;)
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