Thoughts about online piracy and Shakespeare from Scott Turow of the Authors Guild. What happens when a writer loses his monetary incentive to write? The February 2011 essay Would the Bard Have Survived the Web? in the New York Times by Scott Turow (president of the Authors Guild), Paul Aiken (executive dir. of the Authors Guild) and James Shapiro (Columbia U. Shakespeare scholar) uses as a case study the Enlightenment’s explosion of famous playwrights in the late 16th century to conclude that literary talent will often remain undeveloped unless markets reward it.