The Bull does not appear to have attracted any special attention in Venice, and the Government of the Republic continued to frame in its own way the regulations for the control of the printers. =The Earliest Legislation in Venice.=--The legislation of the Republic relating to the productions of the printing-press concerned itself with five general purposes: first, the embodiment into law of custom and precedent; second, the protection against outside competition of the book-manufacturing trade of Venice, and the preservation of the excellence of the Venetian Press; third, the protection of the book-buyer against bad workmanship and exorbitant charges; fourth, the protection of the author’s rights; fifth, the institution of a Bureau to administer the Press laws and to regulate the industry. The legislative bodies of the State were the Senate and the Council of Ten. The earliest legislation for the regulation of the Press (unless we may count as a law the general order of the Ten, previously referred to, establishing a literary censorship for works in Humanity) was a law of the Senate passed August 1, 1517. This law recalled every privilege heretofore granted, placing in the public domain, open for the use of any one, all of the works named in these cancelled privileges. The purpose of this law was to sweep away a mass of obstruction, and in giving full freedom to printing undertakings, to further the development of Venetian publishing. Among its advocates were many of the printer-publishers, who were willing to lose their property rights in existing copyrights for the sake of getting rid of the evils that had arisen from the accumulation of overlapping privileges, or of privileges which had been secured not for direct use but for obstruction and for sale, and of privileges which on various grounds had not been obtained in good faith. Under the law of 1517, privileges were thereafter to require a two-thirds vote in the Senate and were to be issued only for works which were new or which had not before been printed. (_Solum pro libris et operibus novis, numquam antea impressis et non pro aliis._) The next law, that of 1526, has already been referred to in connection with the case of Cynthio’s _Origin of Vulgar Proverbs_. It provided that no book should be printed without the _imprimatur_ of the Council, and that this _imprimatur_ should be granted only after the book had been approved by two censors appointed by the Council as free from scandalous or objectionable matter.