Irish literary buffs have been blocked from viewing dozens of previously unpublished excerpts from James Joyce's notebook writings and family correspondence, which went online at the weekend, the Joyce estate has confirmed.
The estate insisted that all non-US computers be blocked from accessing the material online, following a settlement of a bitter legal dispute between the Joyce estate and a Californian English professor.
Lawyers working for Joyce's grandson Stephen and his family have also blocked the use of the material in the international edition of an updated biography on Joyce's daughter, Lucia.
The estate wrote the clause into the settlement agreement as a way of protecting its claims under international copyright law.
The material, which was accessible to US internet users this weekend, included excerpts from Joyce's notes on Finnegans Wake, a manuscript written by Lucia and correspondence between Joyce and his family.
Carol Loeb Shloss, a professor at Stanford University in California, described the battle to win the material as a "living hell" and said she was glad that she could finally share it with the American public.
Prof Shloss said the material included "pages and pages" of analysis written by Joyce as he prepared Finnegans Wake, adding that readers would be able to see the special symbol he used to represent his troubled daughter, Lucia.
Prof Shloss spent 16 years requesting material from the Joyce estate for use in her book, Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake, a 2003 work which explored the alleged creative exchange between Joyce and Lucia, who was a dancer in Paris before her life became consumed by mental illness.
Stanford University's case against the Joyce estate was settled at a federal district court in California two weeks ago and allowed Prof Shloss to publish the requested material online at www.lucia-the-authors-cut.info as a supplement to her book.
Her lawyer, Robert Spoo, said the case highlighted the restrictive nature of copyright laws in Ireland, Britain and other countries where the material cannot be published. "Undoubtedly the 'fair use' exception to US copyright law is a lot more expansive and generous than it is in Europe and I think this case shows the need for change," he said.
Mr Spoo noted that women once had to smuggle banned copies of Ulysses in their underwear to get it into the US and said he hoped their descendants would not have to resort to the same measures to get Prof Shloss's book from the US into Europe.