A shortened form of literary work in which the major themes of the original are kept occurs in books for faster and easier reading.
Until roughly the mid-19th century, the act of abridgment was widely regarded as fair use and was among the most frequently abused loopholes in British and American copyright law.
[3] However, by the 1870s, international outcry from authors and publishers alike prompted legislatures to consider revisions to end the "very unreasonable" principle.
Plays, notably by Shakespeare, have very often been heavily abridged for television to fit them into ninety-minute or two-hour time slots.
(The same is true of long classical ballets such as the two-and-a-half hour Sleeping Beauty, which has almost never been performed complete on television.)
An abridged series is a fanmade parody that uses video footage from a television series—oftentimes Japanese animation—which is usually filled with comedic redubbing.
[7] Since most abridged series are uploaded to YouTube, they are occasionally subject to copyright infringement takedowns by parent companies.