This is a manifesto issued by Aldus Manutius to warn readers against the printers of Lyon who had been counterfeiting his editions of classic Greek and Roman authors. It is part of a series of complaints which Aldus submitted in Venice and Rome to have his works protected against piracy. The commentary describes the context in which Aldus took the decision to publish his manifesto. It argues that with the emergence of a book market, the problem of counterfeit and plagiarism became increasingly widespread but was not always viewed as disgraceful. Neither was there any established mechanism for the prosecution of offenders. The commentary investigates the concepts of originality and plagiarism in the context of the culture of copying and sharing texts, carried on from the manuscript age, and concludes that by trying to judge the cases of plagiarism during the Renaissance by our modern standards, we risk oversimplification, anachronism, and insensitivity to changes in the 'cultural meaning' of these concepts.
3. Counterfeit and plagiarism in the early years of printing
This is one of a series of complaints which Aldus Manutius (1449/50-1515), the famous Venetian scholar and printer, made against counterfeiters of his works between 1502 and 1507. Aldus arrived in Venice around 1490. His press was the first to use an italic type in 1501 and proved instrumental in allowing the proliferation of pocket classics for which he became well known throughout Europe. It is precisely because of his outstanding reputation and commercial success that Aldo fell prey to ruthless plagiarism.
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4. Privileges, devices and other instruments used by Aldo in his struggle against piracy
At the beginning of the sixteenth century, privileges were granted liberally and indiscriminately but there is little evidence that they were effective. There were no statutory laws safeguarding the rights of the authors and printers, nor an official licensing system. Some degree of governmental supervision of the system was introduced in 1517 when the Council of Ten, responsible for state security, initiated a series of regulatory acts to control the book market (see i_1517). Even then, the state administration would lack the appropriate apparatus to enforce these rules. The printing industry had grown up too quickly for the regulations which began to be implemented on a more regular basis only after 1549 when the Guild of Printers and Booksellers was established (see i_1549). All the records of Venetian applications for privileges provide for the prosecution of counterfeiters, referring to various magistracies such as the Avvogadori de Comun responsible for public order or the Signori di Notte, a body charged with investigating, judging and sentencing crimes in Venice. However, to what extent could privilege holders invoke the law to prosecute alleged piracies of their works?
The Venetian archival records for prosecution are hopelessly scattered and incomplete, and only occasionally do they provide information on legal action taken against offenders. On 22 September 1552, for example, the Tribunal of the Executors against Blasphemy (Esecutori Contro la Bestemmia) fined Curtio Troian da Nav and Grovita Rapicio of Brescia 15 and 10 ducats respectively, for having issued Gaurico's treatise on astrology "con grata et privilegio" without having actually obtained the necessary concessions.
Privileges added prestige to a book and were often forged. In Strasbourg, Walther Ryff, physician and author, and the printer Balthasar Beck forged an imperial privilege in several books in 1540, for which they were summoned to a hearing before the city council.
Apparently, Troian da Nav must have been a regular offender, for already in 1540, the Esecutori condemned a book which he had published, containing poems by Francesco Berni, as "inhoneste, et di pessimo exemplo." Having prohibited the printing and selling of the scandalous volume in the Venetian territories, the Esecutori read their proclamation to various printers. In 1590, they brought legal action against a musician Zuan Battista Rizzo for selling illegally "alcune stanze, dialoghi, et motteti" printed in Treviso, without a licence in Venice. They ordered Zuan Battista to present all the illegal books to their office. If he refused, he was to be exiled from Venice for five years and required to pay 100 ducats to the Arsenale (the seat of the Venetian navy). However, Zuan Battista obviously failed to comply with the request, for two years later again he had been summoned by the Esecutori. Having taken into consideration his "poverty", the Esecutori accepted in his name only 10 ducats and shortened the term of exile to one year. Thus while the official punishment for transgressions could be quite harsh, it was rarely executed. There was no obvious system for applying sanctions against counterfeiters. The fact that there was no established practice to publicise privileges, or record them in a systematic way, did not help. It was difficult to know which books were protected and which were not, even for the Venetian Collegio itself.
Sometimes printers advertised the fact that they had been awarded privileges. One of the earliest attempts was made in 1488 by Bettino da Trezzo who decided to versify his privilege and include it in the Milanese edition of his Letilogia. More typically, printers advertised their privileges with the formula "Cum priuilegio" on the title-page and went to great pains to enlist severe punishments for infringing the copyright, ranging from high fines and confiscation of the books to banishment and prison. The 'threatening' style of these advertisements was not taken seriously. Another way to fight piracy was to publish a warning against counterfeits in the preface or dedication of a book. It was used, for example, by Martin Luther in 1525, after a compositor stole part of the manuscript of his Bible translations and had it printed for sale in Nuremberg. When his official complaint to the city council of Nuremberg proved ineffectual, he prefixed a preface to his Auslegung der Episteln und Evangelien (1525), in which he likened the offending printers to highwaymen and thieves (see d_1525 and d_1541).
"Lastly, I must draw the attention of the students to the fact that some Florentine printers, seeing that they could not equal our diligence in correcting and printing, have resorted to their usual artifices. To Aldus's Institutiones Gramaticae, printed in their offices, they have affixed our well known sign of the Dolphin wound round the Anchor. But they have so managed that any person who is the least acquainted with the books of our production, cannot fail to observe that this is an impudent fraud. For the head of the Dolphin is turned to the left, whereas that of ours is well known to be turned to the right."
Already in 1502 the problem of counterfeiting seemed to be serious and Manutius had to repeat his petition for the monopoly on printing with an italic fount. But the affirmation of the large monopolies granted by the Venetian Senate and the theoretically more powerful and extensive privilege granted by the Pope did not prevent these piracies from repeating themselves. By March 1503 Aldus had made his mind up to change tactics.
Aldus's attempt to undercut his competition backfired. Duly admonished, his rivals wasted little time in availing themselves of Aldus's publication of their errata as a guide to correct their errors and carry on producing new and 'improved' counterfeit impressions of Aldine editions. Such audacity leaves no doubt that the privileges in Italy, whether granted by the Venetian Senate or by the Pope, were hardly respected abroad and offered no protection against fierce and unfair competition. The printed warning to the reader might have helped Aldo to protect his reputation as a publisher and scholar and to ensure that more cultivated readers would chose to buy the original, not spurious editions. But it did little to prevent the repetition of piracies, which continued in Lyon and Florence.
"For he not only knows how to cut the form of letters called cursive or chancery, which neither does Aldo Romano nor others who cunningly have tried to adorn themselves with the plumes of others, but this very Messer Francesco first invented and designed, and it was he who cut all the fonts of letters from which the said Aldo ever printed, as well as the present font with a grace and beauty that speak for themselves."
The world of the emerging book market was ruthless: "a sinister underground" of agents and spies sniffing out secrets to rush cheap copies onto the market before the genuine version had the chance to appear. Those petitioning for privileges to protect their imprints often spoke of "the treacherous rage of competition which riddles this wretched profession." The bookseller Bernardino Rasma astutely described the situation in his petition of 1496:
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