Before he died, he somehow hacked The Well and erased all evidence of his existence. Well all atitter for a very short period. Ultimately, though, it was just one of those head scratchers that occurred in an isolated moment in time, like watching a weird news report. Intellectual property issues are where the lawyers are going to make all their money. Over the last decade, publishers have been trying to wrest control of authors' rights to such an extent that it's hard for authors to retain electronic rights to their work.
Publishers see a bonanza down the road in terms of electronic rights and electronic distribution.
They have no model that proves they can make a nickel on this stuff, but there's a greed factor. They've decided to try and get all the rights from the writers up front. Writers have to resist. These guys with all that idealistic crap are hurting everyone else. We've got all this information, and someone is going to have to decide if it's good information or bad information.