The earlier laws were explicitly against printers. They were for scribes, and indirectly for the church, states, and other powers that controlled the scribes a

The earlier laws were explicitly against printers. They were for scribes, and indirectly for the church, states, and other powers that controlled the scribes and wanted to limit the spread of dissident views. At least according to most histories of copyright I've seen. Wikipedia seems to agree: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright#Early_developments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright#Early_dev...