These facts gave rise to certain problems peculiar to the industry. What right had the publisher to control his product and be protected against a ruinous competition from other printers? Had he any such right at all? Had the author any right to control the printing, publishing, and sale of his works? Had he any right to be secured in the receipt of some remuneration? How could that right be protected? Was the printing press to be allowed to pour out anything its owners pleased, regardless of its effect upon citizenship, religion, or morals, or should the product be controlled so as to secure the helping and not the hurting of mankind? If it was to be controlled, who was to decide upon the measures and standards of control, and on what ground? What was helpful and what was harmful? The attempted solution of these problems, of course, grew out of the accepted commercial usages of the time. Patents and copyrights as we now know them, regulated by general laws and accessible to all inventors and authors, were unknown. Their place was taken by monopolies which, as we shall see, sometimes had much the same effect as a modern patent or copyright. A monopoly, sometimes called a privilege, was a grant to a certain person of the sole right to sell or to manufacture a certain thing, to trade in a certain locality, or do something of a similar nature. Monopolies survive today in certain countries, though mainly as governmental monopolies; for example, in Italy the sale of matches is a governmental monopoly. No individual is allowed to sell them except as a government agent, and the traveler is not allowed to take any across the frontier, even in his pocket. In Russia the sale of vodka was a governmental monopoly until the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, when its sale was prohibited. In the middle ages, however, private monopolies were very common. It is important to know that these monopolies or privileges were literally what the latter name indicates. Very often they were given to royal favorites as a means for their personal enrichment. They were purely acts of grace and did not imply any recognition of right on the part of the person to whom they were granted.