Don't Read This or the Copyright Police will get you

international | arts and media | feature

Wednesday June 16, 2004 12:28

by dotdotdot

A quote from Ulysses - more than 3 lines!!@!!

--People do not know how dangerous lovesongs can be, the auric egg of Russell warned occultly. The movements which work revolutions in the world are born out of the dreams and visions in a peasant's heart on the hillside. For them the earth is not an exploitable ground but the living mother. The rarefied air of the academy and the arena produce the sixshilling novel, the musichall song. France produces the finest flower of corruption in Mallarme but the desirable life is revealed only to the poor of heart, the life of Homer's Phaeacians.

From these words Mr Best turned an unoffending face to Stephen.

As Dublin celebrates Bloomsday, it turns out that any reading or publication of more than 3 lines of Ulysses is protected by copyright. Policing this is made more difficult by the brief period that the work was out of copyright in the 1990's before the extension of copyright period for 70 years after artists death. The Irish Dail had to pass a special law to enable it to mount an exhibition of Joycean manuscripts, there are stories doing the rounds of copyright lawyers scouring the city for people quoting more than 3 lines from Ulysses and the Joyce breakfast had to take place with no readings from Joyce.

You can still read Ulysses thanks to the internet – but no quoting, at least not in Ireland, on Bloomsday
Read Ulysses here
The Project Gutenburg site where you can download the text