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'Pezzana e Consorti' case: supporting documents, Venice (1780)
Source: N/A
Citation:
'Pezzana e Consorti' case: supporting documents, Venice (1780), Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900), eds L. Bently & M. Kretschmer, www.copyrighthistory.org
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Dominante [Venice] – we, Marcantonio Manfré, Prior of the Guild, and
his partners from the Banca,* the most humble servants of Your Excellencies,
find ourselves compelled to have recourse to the providence of this Most
Excellent Magistracy, so that with your authority you might recall to an
obedience of the Laws those who neglect to observe them and also those
who maliciously bring confusion into them by means of wilful misinter-
pretations or offend against then in downright disobedience. It is our most
humble intention to report, in the present respectful petition, the disorders
which have emerged and are ever growing from day to day, so that once
these have been confronted by the Wisdom of Your Excellencies, the
measures which you may deign to enact, in your clemency and authority,
are able to put an end to their course.
Firstly: To start off with printing, we have first of all become aware
of an abuse which must of necessity result in work of the lowest possible
quality – for it is this which almost universally passes through the hands
of the apprentices who are illegally working as compositors.
Secondly: Two other things which are in themselves fatal for the
business have emerged: one of them is the not being able to have faith in
the prints which are produced from books that purport to have been printed
for wholesale or for retail sale, in which it isn't just copies that were bartered
and exchanged with Venetian booksellers that are used, but others too
which are partly copies distributed to booksellers by foreign states and
partly copies given to people who do not belong to the Guild and who
then sell these as cheaply as possible, thereby reducing sales for those
booksellers who, acting in good faith, did not provide themselves with
such copies.
Thirdly: From this proliferation of prints there arises the second of
these disorders – namely, that many vendors have appeared in the public
squares and in the workshops who have nothing whatsoever to do with
our Guild, and who offer at cheap prices almost the whole left-over stock
of those very same books which came into the shops as retail goods,
______
*) The presidency of the Venetian Guild of Printers and Booksellers.
No Transcription available.
Source: N/A
Citation:
'Pezzana e Consorti' case: supporting documents, Venice (1780), Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900), eds L. Bently & M. Kretschmer, www.copyrighthistory.org
Back | Record | Images | No Commentaries
Translation only | Transcription only | Show all | Bundled images as pdf
Dominante [Venice] – we, Marcantonio Manfré, Prior of the Guild, and
his partners from the Banca,* the most humble servants of Your Excellencies,
find ourselves compelled to have recourse to the providence of this Most
Excellent Magistracy, so that with your authority you might recall to an
obedience of the Laws those who neglect to observe them and also those
who maliciously bring confusion into them by means of wilful misinter-
pretations or offend against then in downright disobedience. It is our most
humble intention to report, in the present respectful petition, the disorders
which have emerged and are ever growing from day to day, so that once
these have been confronted by the Wisdom of Your Excellencies, the
measures which you may deign to enact, in your clemency and authority,
are able to put an end to their course.
Firstly: To start off with printing, we have first of all become aware
of an abuse which must of necessity result in work of the lowest possible
quality – for it is this which almost universally passes through the hands
of the apprentices who are illegally working as compositors.
Secondly: Two other things which are in themselves fatal for the
business have emerged: one of them is the not being able to have faith in
the prints which are produced from books that purport to have been printed
for wholesale or for retail sale, in which it isn't just copies that were bartered
and exchanged with Venetian booksellers that are used, but others too
which are partly copies distributed to booksellers by foreign states and
partly copies given to people who do not belong to the Guild and who
then sell these as cheaply as possible, thereby reducing sales for those
booksellers who, acting in good faith, did not provide themselves with
such copies.
Thirdly: From this proliferation of prints there arises the second of
these disorders – namely, that many vendors have appeared in the public
squares and in the workshops who have nothing whatsoever to do with
our Guild, and who offer at cheap prices almost the whole left-over stock
of those very same books which came into the shops as retail goods,
______
*) The presidency of the Venetian Guild of Printers and Booksellers.
No Transcription available.