I ask this because, as of now, the Internet is the single greatest tool to spread information and ideas over wide distances in human history. But prior to the Internet I've heard that the printing press had an equally profound impact on how information was disseminated to the public. Were there any attempts by governments to regulate the printing press?
Hey! I'm going to talk a little about governmental (and societal) limits on printing in the Ottoman Empire. Bits of this will be taken from an answer I wrote before on why printing was adopted so late in the Middle East but I'm going to expand on it overall and focus it to your question.
Although the printing press was known in the Ottoman Empire starting in the 15th century, soon after it was invented and popularised by Gutenberg, its use was largely banned from 1483 under Sultan Beyzid II until 1726 under Sultan Ahmed III. I say largely banned because although one could not print in Arabic script (ruling out Arabic, Ottoman Turkish, and Persian languages such as Farsi), non-Muslims were allowed to print in foreign scripts. This is why the first Arabic book in the Ottoman Empire was only printed ~1727, when a printing press was opened by a Hungarian convert to Islam, Ibrahim Muteferrika, but the first Hebrew printing press had been opened before the dawn of the 16th century.
So what would the reasoning behind this ban be?
Overall, I would claim that a fear of corruption in religious texts was one of the driving forces behind the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid II's 1483 ban on the use of printed books. As Muhsin Mahdi writes, one look at the early Qur'ans "must have made Muslim readers of the Koran think that only the Devil himself could have produced such an ugly and faulty version of their Holy Book". This is what I want to focus upon for this post. It wasn't so much a desire to control information that could threaten the power of the Sultanate (like how China or North Korea may censor certain information) as it was an attempt to control the corruption of religious texts.
First, socially, calligraphy was and remains a highly valued form of art in the Islamic world. Calligraphists took pride in their great skill in not only forming aesthetically pleasing letters, but also in providing elaborate illustrations and patterns to decorate important works, both religious and secular. Printing presses, especially early presses with their often crude lettering, could not hope to match the beauty of hand-written manuscripts. Nor could they match their accuracy.
A class of professional scribes and copyists - called warraqeen emerged from the 8th century. (Dr. Walid Ghali mentions that there were between 20,000 and 90,000 warraqeen in 18th century Istanbul alone who protested the adoption of the printing press based upon both economic dimensions (copying was profitable work) and religion, which I will get to shortly.)
These warraqeen did not only reproduce works but also played a pivotal role in how accepted they were. Works were seen as authentic not only based upon what information they contained but also who that information was written by. James Redman links this to the Islamic idea of "definitive knowledge" or that "the perception of what could accurately be prescribed as truth, fact, or reality was dependent not upon abstract statements but rather who confirmed those accounts". The importance of chain of transmission can also be seen in other facets of the Islamic world, such as the isnad that records who passed down what hadith from the time of Muhammad onwards.
With printing, this chain of transmission was impossible to verify. Additionally, prints were difficult to check for their accuracy (and given the limited accuracy of many of the early European prints of the Qur'an, this fear may have been well founded). In Arabic, a single dot can change the sound of a letter, and thus the meaning of an entire word (for example, the letters "ra" (ر) and "za" (ز) were often confused in early Italian prints of the Qur'an.) Although printing gradually improved, even a few errors could fundamentally change the meaning of a text and put off Muslim scholars from accepting printing. Dr. Ghali gives a good example of this (with pictures!) in his conference presentation that I'll link below.
Compare this to the traditional Islamic way of reproducing texts. Jonathan Bloom, in his book Paper Before Print: The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World, writes that for a manuscript to be considered an official translation, the scribe would have to read back the work to the author who would then certify that it is authentic and free from error. He adds that it was important to prove not only that a scribe heard a book from a specific source but also that he read it back to an approved source. With this double-layered verification, the chain of transmission was protected.
As arduous as this process may be, it has the definite advantage of ensuring that official reproductions are free from error and accurately portray what the author meant, a form of quality control if you may. Once a reproduction was certified as correct, it could then be read in other Mosques to circles of scribes to repeat the process. Bloom writes that
"in contrast to the situation in medieval Christendom, where a single scribe made a single parchment copy of the single parchment manuscript on the desk before him, one author in the Muslim world could generate a dozen copies from a single reading, and each of these authorized copies could generate another dozen. Within two 'generations' of readings, well over a hundred copies of a single work might be produced". (116)
Because of these fears (and because there was an accepted calligraphic tradition that could avoid them) Muslim scholars went so far as to put out fatwas banning the use of the printing press. Dr. Ghali mentions both the ban of the Sheikh al-Islam (the highest religious scholar in the Ottoman Empire) who reinforced Beyzid II's decree by claiming only non-Muslims could use a movable-type press, and the various fatwas of al-Azhar (one of the most prestigious academic institutions in Sunni Islam) that banned the printing of Qur'ans and other religious books such as explications. This religious prohibition was actually kept in 1726 as Ibrahim Muteferrika was given permission to print only secular books.
So one can see here a rather long-lasting prohibition on the use of printing for Arabic script in general and religious texts in particular that came from both the government and the religious leaders; neither of these parties wanted the holy texts to be corrupted. Although these bans slowly faded out, they heavily delayed the acceptance of the printing press in the Islamic world. The control of information was not the crux of the issue but rather the unwillingness to sacrifice the extensive quality-controls that ensured the Qur'an and its study would remain pure.
I know this wasn't quite what you were asking for but I hope it stirs some interest! Let me know if you have any questions.
Sources
"Commencement of Printing in the Muslim World: A View of Impact on Ulama at Early Phase of Islamic Moderate Trends" by Moinuddin Aqeel.
"From Pen to Press: Debates on the Development of Islamic Printing" by Samuel Tay
Paper Before Print: The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World by Jonathan Bloom
"Printing History in the Arabic-Speaking World" from the Yale University Library
"Print or not print: Is That Still the Question? Delay in Adopting Printing Press in Muslim Countries" by Dr. Walid Ghali (bear in mind this is technically a draft paper).