Originally Posted by Scissor Queen
Originally Posted by okiepastor
The scanning is in violation of copyright laws......
No it isn't. As long as it's for your own use it's okay to scan and store them in your own computer. It would likely come under the Fair Use Doctrine.
It is a violation of copyright law to distribute the scanned copies.
Any publication that prints patterns has to be aware that people are going to copy them in some manner. Often, there will be instructions to "enlarge 200%" or something similar, so how can that be done without scanning? Also, sometimes there is a statement requesting that if the pattern is copied and used for selling purposes, the originator of the pattern be "given credit".
Many of the patterns are not copyrighted at all. I think we are free to copy and scan for our own use, but as above, do not distribute.