More on the complete re-write

Shannon Hollender
Prof. Malesh
Hellacious Ppr.
Due: 5/5/06

Writing to be “Rich”… As Opposed to?
Stephen has a house, two dogs and a lovely wife. He does not work a regular job. He sells things on e-bay in his leisure time and buys more than he should in turn. After all he can afford it. Stephen likes to enjoy his in-house pool and the stables where his favourite horse; Jumper is and most of all he loves his back-woods cabin where his buddies like to go hunting and he will often go to fish. Most of all Steven is proud of his library. It took him a long time to assemble the collection of books he has and his favourite book is the one on the third shelf from the top. It is green and leather-bound and the lettering, in shiny black in-laid words, reveal the author to be a Richard Bachman. A no-body like he was. Rich was a man with a dream back in Maine and here he is now with hundreds of books and an ever-growing estate.
Back in Maine, where he keeps his cottage, Stephen can be Stephen, but here in his library with his pen, and the type-writer and all the fun new electronic toys he has he can’t help but once more feel the influence of Rich. He too has had this dream and Rich proved for him that it was possible. It seems that in each other’s foot steps these two men followed.
A writer’s job is one of immense struggle, a writer’s story is one worth telling. In the quiet dim mornings, the dank and subtle afternoons, into each night, writers are awake tapping, scratching and forming out their stories. Every day hoping this time will be different, thousands of manuscripts pour through the mail. Publisher after publisher and more still hire thousands of workers just to sort the relevant mail from the spittle. Every writer hopes that this time they will be given a chance to make it to the top. No one gets there unless they’ve done the foot-work first. It’s not in who you know, it’s who knows you and if those publishers have no clue who you are; there is no chance for you to survive the paper mill and make it to the big leagues.
Stephen went on a publicity-stunt spree. And after writing thousands of articles, finally someone gave him a chance. He’s rich today and day after day he writes. Every year he cranks out multitudes of books. Eventually a few fall through the cracks and don’t get published. Like his earlier work, it never got published. Rich like famous Stephen looked out the window trying to figure out what would prevent his work from getting lost. Stephen wanted to publish his older works. But now that he was a big fish and the pond seemed smaller, he figured it wouldn’t go over too well. Maybe they would think his writing was slipping, maybe those books would end up being career-killers. Stephen loved to write, writing was his life. He stared out the window and thought.
The window is closed but the birds are outside dive-bombing each other. His mind wanders to the first time he wrote about the birds. The first time he really noticed them. He liked their blues and their grey-browns and watched as the Blue-birds and the Robins were fending off the Hawks. “In the face of dismemberment and death, those who fight are ultimately the ones who survive...” he thought and it became his motto for life. He wrote it in a poem on a tissue. Heavy black ink on fragile whitish yellow. After years the paper was old, and the words were blurred. That poem used to sit framed on the desk, until it was broken it in a fit of rage. He liked what the birds had taught him that day and he liked the fact that the little guy could always win if they fought hard-enough.
As a writer Stephen fought hard, Rich had taught him that, and so did the birds. But Rich was a bit violent from time to time. Violent but passionate and Stephen admired that passion, it inspired him. Both Rich and the birds taught Stephen to be a survivor and Stephen eventually survived Rich’s death, but it was the birds that gave him the solution to this, his problem.
Another publicity stunt and this one was the perfect solution to all his problems, no longer as himself Stephen barreled head-long into a progression of events that could have killed him, as a writer that is. It had the potential howeve,r to make a lot of people very wealthy and very happy… So with his idea in mind he drove straight into his publisher’s office and proposed his great idea…
Henrik Ibsen, another no name writer was turned away from his meeting. He has an appointment with the publisher but since Stephen showed up unannounced, Henrik was told to go home and that they would call him… His phone had been shut off, this was his last chance with the publisher and now he couldn’t afford his rent. Henrik began to get desperate.
Stephen was ecstatic, he knew all along the publisher would agree, after all he is their best-seller but it was great to know they were so willing to succumb to all his demands, they even shoved out other writers to make room for Stephen. He really felt like he was in the big leagues now. Besides the fewer other writers there were, the better his chances were with the public. Stephen felt no remorse for the small writer outside, it was the small writer inside himself he wanted to clear the way for.
Back in Connecticut, or was it Illinois, Stephen was Rich and Rich was a part of Stephen. And the whole messed up story left Stephen, under Rich’s name, rich and famous as Stephen. Confused yet? Sounds like a third rate thriller novel right? No? Well it would be completely understandable if it did sound like that. So let me illuminate the scenario for you. Firstly it is exceedingly important to know that Stephen isn’t just wrapped up with some guy named Richard. Stephen is Richard. Secondly, it needs to be understood that both Stephen and Richard are writers, famous writers.
As an author, Stephen made it big, but he didn’t want all that fame affecting some of his earlier unpublished work. Stephen instead changed his name, at least in literary terms, to Richard so that he could publish his earlier works without feeling like he was riding those earlier stories on the fame of his now well-known name. But when the public found out that Richard in fact was Stephen, Stephen decided to get rid of Richard. He threw a funeral for his pen-name and when the next book came out, a perverse joke ensued.
Remember that third rate thriller novel I mentioned? Well Stephen thought it was a great idea too and after Richard’s funeral, Stephen decided to write down the battle between his self and the alter-ego pen name Richard. This book was an instant hit because of publicity alone. Stephen built quite a name for himself not only because he is an inspired writer but also due to his flair for the abnormal and twisted and his talent to draw the attention of the reader in publicity stunt after publicity stunt after publicity stunt… Stephen often wrote about himself, subjecting his mind and life to the scrutiny of the page. One of Stephen’s seemingly favourite moves is letting the story take over and literally reshape his life. Where the book started out with a struggling writer using a pen name, in a nasty and jaunting abnormal twist of events the author, our beloved Dr. Jekyll type has found himself the morbid play thing of his own Mr. Hyde.
The reason our Stephen was trying to get rid of his pen name, was due to what he called in his book “cancer of the pseudonym.” The pen name however, is more than just shiny black lettering on a dark shade of green binding. The events unfolded for our Rich, our Henrik, our many other writers like some story from the pages of a book. Stephen, in his utter success pushed away so many others. Squashed them under the sheer magnitude of his own big name.
1980 passed slowly for Kate Milner Rabb, who like our Henrik was a budding writer rejected. She was alone in her apartment, she had to get her mother to care for her kids and her sister to care for her cat. She found a janitorial job in addition to her McDonalds job and was making rent again. She thought she’d never save the money she needed to publish by vanity press, but she vowed to begin scraping together the cash. If a publisher wouldn’t buy her book she would put up the cash herself to get her career started.
When Rich was no longer useful to him, Rich too had to go. And like some villain in the book, Stephen began to effectively kill off every small writer that didn’t help him or conform to his own plan. Stephen managed to take over the literary scene as our beloved little-guy writers began to die off faster. In the years that followed Stephen’s rise to the top, writers found it exceedingly harder to get signed and published because it was hard to measure up. Stephen was on the top of the heap, like some strong man in a Nazi gas chamber. And he wrote about it. Over and over again, writers found rejection in the wake of Stephen, they had to turn elsewhere to pay the rent, and there was a budding job-market sucking up creative minds. Technology. In 1983 as Stephen was publishing his twenty-fifth major work the internet was being formed into a species of what we know it as today.
As the years passed, creative thinkers no longer capable of finding their fortunes in writing turned to journalism and technology. As Stephen was writing his sixtieth book, creative problem solvers and quick studies found themselves moving technological advancement at mach speed. In 1993 Gates slowly began to become the World’s wealthiest man as he published his first Biography. He indeed became the world’s wealthiest man, tenfold. And while Gates continually gave it away, Stephen continually dished out more suppression to struggling writers. He dished out book after book to his fans and failure after failure to young writers trying to measure up. Stephen kept getting better and better. In technology however, the more savvy writers were on the brink of finally bringing Stephen to his knees.
1996 came and went in a big way and with it an online library which offered entire books in digital format, this a first ever. These electronic books (e-books) were an instant hit for all those technologically savvy persons on the go. Reading in the plane being a favourite pass-time, many businessmen found it clunky to take their lap-top, their PDA and their books. With these e-books, they could take their computer and their handheld to what ever meeting they were going to and read their book on their PDA like their child played with the Game-Boy they got for Christmas. Not having to worry about those clunky books was a two-fold advantage. The readers didn’t have to worry about space issues and the authors didn’t have to rely on publishing and distributing paper-bound copies. The cost and struggle of publishing had been nearly eliminated and like the levies breaking in New Orleans, the writers should have flooded this new market.
They couldn’t, there was nothing to protect their writing from plagiarism and many lost their work to prolific distributors and dishonest readers who did not pay for copies of the books they had access to. In literally no time there was another big problem, if no one was paying for what was being written and distributed, this new “solution” became essentially useless as writing became essentially a non-profit job even if the writer were someone as good as Stephen. Only those writers looking to distribute their names without gaining profit could find this new solution useful. The rest of us had to wait.
In 1998 there was yet another advancement to the new solution to the struggle between big name publishing and the little-guys. The Internet had arrived head-on as the solution to the problem and refused to stand down. While Stephen was writing and publishing “Bag of Bones” the internet was already offering writers a new outlet. As a reporter, a budding writer could now offer their opinions online through online newspapers, and through web logs (or blogs). A short story writer could find a whole new pool of readers quickly and easily. Building a name and reputation now was as easy for a novice write as it could possibly be for a big name writer. A law was passed in 1998 called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA in a nut shell served, to wall up and protect copyright and to punish “those who seek to breach that protection.” So says Scarlet Pruitt, digital correspondent for CNN. And this was what budding writers needed, to get their work publicized safely and at minimal cost.
Using this law and the opportunities provided by the web, finally little writers could get their books some circulation without having to worry about big name writers like Stephen pushing them out. But as e-books became the next big thing in literature, Stephen began to hatch yet another publicity stunt. Stephen was up to no good again looking for even more publicity and profit and four books after his 1998 best seller, Stephen again decided to bum-rush novice writers in the e-books realm too. With newly designed digital encryption and a variety of other anti-theft protections including the DMCA Stephen published his next big book in the series he was working on only as an e-book. Within hours distribution of novice writers felt the impact and within the same hours Stephen’s new book had already been hacked and distributed illegally. Over the course of two weeks though, selling his digital book online for only two dollars and fifty cents, Stephen had made upwards of twenty-thousand dollars. This was far more than he had ever made selling to his publishers and in this way his book also ended up cheaper to the public by about six dollars. With his book “Riding the Bullet” Stephen took a chance on something new and gained the world of e-book publication infamous notoriety.
My point is, despite this lucrative ordeal, Stephen never published electronically again. He had learned a valuable lesson about the dishonesty of the public and he had exposed a very important flaw in the world of digital ownership.


Works Cited
"Committee on Copyright and Other Legal Matters (CLM)." Limitations and Exceptions to Copyright and Neighbouring Rights in the Digital Environment. 18 Sept. 04. IFLA. 27 Feb. 06 .
"Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)." SU Lair. Stanford University. 23 Feb. 06 .
“Limitations and Exceptions to Copyright and Neighbouring Rights in the Digital Environment: An International Library Perspective” IFLA, Committee on Copyright and Other Legal Matters (CLM) 22 Feb. 2006 . February 2002
“Petition to Abolish the Digital Millenium Copyright Act” 22 Feb. 2006 .
"US CODE: Title 17,107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use." U.S. Code Collection. Cornell Law School, Legal Information Institute. 5 Mar. 2006 .
“US v. ElcomSoft & Sklyarov FAQ” EFF 27 Feb. 2006 . February 2002
Bernard, Andre, ed. Rotten Rejections. Ossining, New York: Pushcart P, 1990.
Curtis, Richard, and William T. Quick. How to get your E-Book Published. Ed. Donya Dickerson. Cincinnati, OH.: F&W Publications, Inc., 2002. This book by Curtis
Dinsmore, Alan; Sajka, Janina; Schroeder, Paul; “Comments to Library of Congress, 2003: AFB Seeks Exemption for Literary Works” 22 Feb. 2006 .
Eamonn Neylon “First Steps in an Information Commerce Economy Digital Rights Management in the Emerging E-Book Environment” D-Lib Magazine Volume 7 Number 1 27 Feb. 2006 . January 2001
Hilden, Julie; “The First Ammendment Issues Raised by the Troubling Prosecution of E-Book Hacker Dmitry Sklyarov” 23 Feb. 2006 .
Hodes, Laura, “Adobe's reversal of its Position on the "Hacker" That Cracked its E-Books: Proof That The Digital Millenium Copyright Act Needs To Change” 27 Feb. 2006 . August 2001
Jay, S; “How To Protect Your e-books From Piracy And Copyright Infringement!” 22 Feb. 2006 .
John, Dessauer P. Book Publishing What it is, What it Does. New York, N. Y.: R. R. Bowker Co., 1977.
Lloyd, Rich; “Electronic Rights: What is a Book?” 22 Feb. 2006 . 2002
McAllister, Neil; “Thursday, Civil Rights or Copyrights? Hack an eBook, Go to Jail” 22 Feb. 2006 . August 2, 2001
McCullagh, Declan; “The Struggle over Intellectual Property” 22 Feb. 2006 . August 6, 2001
Moohr, Geraldine; “The Crime of Copyright Infringement: An Inquiry Based on Morality, Harm, and Criminal Theory” 22 Feb. 2006 .
Pimm, Bob; “Authors' Rights in the E-Book Revolution” 22 Feb. 2006 . October 2000
Pruitt, Scarlet; “Four years on, digital copyright law revs up”, 22 Feb. 2006 . February 2002
Templeton, Brad. "An EBook Publisher on Why the U.S. Attorney Should Free Dmitry Sklyarov." Dec. ClariNet. 23 Feb. 06 .
"US V. ElcomSoft & Sklyarov." Electronic Frontier Foundation. 19 Feb. 02. 23 Feb. 06 .



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates
http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/r