Stealing King?

One Authors Stolen Novels Makes Another a Fortune

March 18, 2013. A few weeks ago I watched CBS News one evening. Towards the end of the program a TV commercial popped up on the screen. Stephen Kings 2009 novel UNDER THE DOME was to be released as a movie in June. I wasnt surprised. Most of Kings horror novels had been made into turgid TV movies broadcast by ABC. Some like the short story Apt Pupil collected in DIFFERENT SEASONS published in 1984 failed miserably at the box office. But Stephen King was considered a popular author, he published regularly, and in a movie industry which would produce video on lint collecting under a bed his horror novels were a package waiting to be opened. The problem for me was: his novel was plagiarized from an unpublished book of mine called DOMINION OF THE SKIES. My novel opens with a scene of a woman who goes to swim in a pool and contemplates the fact that the thin line between the water and the sky has disappeared because she is being spied on by the US. The heroine tries to find a reason for this invasion of privacy but hounded by federal agents flees to the Pacific to escape the hyenas of media tracking her every move. Stephen Kings plagiarized version of this story can be seen in his title UNDER THE DOME. In his story, a rural town in Maine is suddenly separated from the outside world by an invisible dome which descends over it and traps its residents inside. They think the dome is put down by juvenile extra-terrestrials who sadistically want to watch people run around like ants trying to get free. Thousands die until two town residents convince the extra-terrestrials to take pity on them and the dome is lifted. It is really a story about how one author profiteers by stealing anothers book. The trouble is: civil suits for injunctions, forfeiture, or compensation for criminal infringement of a work in federal courts are obstructed systematically in America. I know. I have sued Stephen King a series of times in federal courts and been denied public reporting or due process in such cases. This is not the first time Stephen King has stolen my unpublished work. In 1987 he published a mass market novel called MISERY portraying a psychotic nurse Annie Wilkes who holds best-selling writer Paul Sheldon hostage in a Maine farmhouse begging him to write a sequel to a romance novel. The main characters were modeled on summer residents of an island off the coast of Maine Annie Wilkes (modeled on me) was depicted as a crazed fan of Paul Sheldon whose novel excerpt was derived from my unpublished work. Annie is hated by a homosexual named Roydman based on an island resident named James Rogers. Libel laws bar authors and publishers from malicious publication of information deliberately identifying real persons in order to defame their character. Copyright laws bar publication of stolen or plagiarized material with substantial similarity to another authors work. Criminal infringement is defined by

the nature of illicit access to a work whether it is published, unpublished, or acquired by illegal means. If the US intercepts an individual and allows access by authors, publishers, broadcasters, or movie producers it is violating fundamental rights to privacy, property, and the civil rights of a citizen. The First Amendment does not provide protection for commercial speech which is intended to defraud or deceive the public. Yet by the misuse of US intelligence capabilities, authors like Stephen King are allowed to publish and promote works stolen from another author with impunity. While he and his media collaborators try to make a fortune from plagiarism, my works remain obstructed from publication and sales for rightful profit. As the broadcasting and movie industry prepare to promote a movie of Stephen Kings plagarized novel UNDER THE DOME perhaps it is time to address the crimes of these interconnected industries which spy, steal, and lie to the public about where they get their subject matter and how they block public speech about illegal spying for commercial gain in America. -Anne HIltner