Tag Archives: wiki

What about wikis?

Just a thought. I was reading in Howard again, and read that one form of “piracy” in the early days of the printing press was to print abridged versions of a manuscript. Then, of course, selling them unbeknownst to the author of the original and keeping all the profits. I immediately saw this as a parallel to wikis (or wikias) today. At first, we can understand that this might be problematic for copyright because it contains all the information about a given text in one place. I would guess that it ends up in fair use most likely because the purpose of the use is not for profit; they are just meant to be encyclopedias. However, a bigger dilemma occurs when someone reads the wiki before reading the actual text. This happened to me. I was curious about Shaman King, because I had never watched it to its ending and thought that it was cancelled in America before its last episode. I went on to the wikia and read up on the plot and the characters. I felt no need to go back and read the manga because I had already absorbed the story. This is why abridged versions are problematic. They give the reader a short, concise expression of the story, so anyone not interested in particular language gets their fill and never buys the cumbersome original.