OXFORD – The 24 hour Wikipedia blackout has resulted in millions worth of damage as students cut and paste from library books to compete coursework.
Although a final damage assessment has yet to be completed, analysts are expecting upwards of £60 million in damages across libraries in English-speaking countries.
Early estimates suggest as much as a 15% reduction in the number of usable books worldwide over the day long protest against anti-piracy legislation.
Literary bloodbath
With the online encyclopedia out of action to protest SOPA and PIPA bills, educators have reported widespread submission of assignments that resemble a collection of ransom notes as student search for a new way to produce school reports using someone else’s work.
“I’ve never seen anything like it before,” claimed librarian Janet McDonald. “They just came in a started ripping out pages like there was no tomorrow.”
As panicked students made use of alternative methods to complete assignments with only surface level knowledge of a given topic, damaged titles are thought to include works on the American Civil War, the battle of Hastings and several copies of Romeo and Juliet.
Similar institutions across Britain and the United States have all reported the same scenes on Wednesday: young people swarming libraries armed with scissors and Pritt Stick.
‘Never again’
Oxford University English professor Daniel Edwards said their library “were still going through the wreckage,” and warned Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales against future action, suggesting the nation’s supply of books would not withstand another blackout.
With students unaccustomed to the notion of flicking through books, there has been a sigh of relief at the return of Wikipedia. Many were stunned at the lack of search options available in the standard textbook that forced the readers to scan pages with their eyes to find relevant sections of texts.
“It was like stepping into the stone age,” said history student Simon Jefferies, a self-professed expert after scanning the Wikipedia page on the stone age “during lunch one time”.
While he supported the protest, Mr Jefferies also believed the crowd-sourcing site did not fully consider the impact their actions would have on education.
“Cutting and pasting from that book was a right bastard,” he recalled. “I had to read about the whole of World War II just to find out what happened in the end.”
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