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 About 1566 there was a provision that works should be registered before publication without charge, and a complete registry of published works was kept in Venice. In 1569 as many as 117 copyright entries were made in Venice, and so few, after the plague years, as seven in 1599. Only two applications are recorded as refused by the Senate. The one recorded instance of punishment for piracy was that on the work of Pappa Alesio of Corfu, wherein the infringer was fined 200 ducats, besides ten ducats for each unauthorized copy printed, and was forbidden to print for ten years.

About 1600 the exodus of printers from Venice was checked by legislation, and in 1603 an elaborate decree provided copyright for twenty years on books first published in Venice, for ten years on books first published in Italy but registered in Venice, or on books not printed in Venice within the previous twenty years, and for five years on books not printed within ten years previous, and also a fine of twenty-five ducats for the false use of "Venetia" in the imprint. Later, as is evidenced by complaints in 1671, deposit copies were required for the libraries of St. Mark and of Padua. By the close of the seventeenth century the provisions for copyright in Venice had become so complicated, according to Putnam, following Brown's historical study of " The Venetian printing press," as to require the following processes, most of them involving a fee: "testamur from the ducal secretary; certificate from the Rifformatori of the University of Padua; imprimatur from the Chiefs of the Ten; revision by the Superintendent of the Press; revision by the public proof-reader; collation of the original text with the text as printed, by the secretary to the Rifformatori; certificate from the librarian of St. Mark that a copy had been deposited in the