Copyright privileges ran from one to twenty-five years and were sometimes extended. Not infrequently copyright privileges were issued with limiting clauses or conditions, such as that the books should be sold at a “fair price,” that the work copyrighted should be published within a year, or that a certain number of copies should be printed per week, and the like. The third method of protection was by a privilege like a modern patent, covering certain processes or certain kinds of printing. For example: Aldus was granted the sole right to use the italic character, while others were given the sole right of printing in some foreign language. The fourth method was the absolute prohibition of the importation of books printed outside the territories of the Republic. This was coupled with the refusal of copyright privileges to all books not printed in Venice. Of course, in this whole discussion we must understand that Venice was not the modern city, but the medieval state, which at times was of considerable extent. This system had certain rather serious defects in practice. In the first place the Council of Ten which issued all these privileges, although usually an extremely businesslike body, kept no record of its relations with printers. Probably this was not a serious matter for the first few years, but the time soon came when no member of the Council could remember what privileges had been granted either to printers or authors. Consequently privileges were very liable to duplication and the Council finally got out of the difficulty by issuing its copyrights with the proviso “If no previous copyright has been issued.” This was very comfortable for the Council, but rather uncomfortable for the printer, because it threw upon him the burden of finding out facts which were nowhere on record. Again, there was no machinery for the enforcement of the privileges. While it is probable that legal proceedings could be instituted under them, some other machinery ought to have been provided to make them effective. Lastly, and this was, as we shall see, a common difficulty with all early privileges, they were very narrow in application. Privileges applied only to the territory of Venice and were worthless elsewhere. As we have seen in the case of Aldus, the products of the Venetian press were sold throughout the civilized world, but outside of their place of production they were unprotected by any copyright or other defence. In some cases they were excluded by protective laws similar to those by which Venice attempted to secure her printers from foreign competition. At a somewhat later period some difficulty arose because of the claims of the Papal Court to issue privileges outside of the States of the Church. On the whole, however, the Venetian system was about the best and the simplest of the early systems for dealing with the problems of the printing press.