Thank you for bringing this up. I am a brand new quilter and frankly this had never even been in my thinking until now. I have several times asked people on the board if they would share their pattern for a particular quilt that I just fell in love with. Most times they would send me a link to where they bought it. Great! I appreciated it. Now I'm wondering if they were thinking I was trying to get away with something. I didn't understand there were copyrighted patterns and such. I bet most people don't realize it until it is brought to their attention.
I used to belong to a charity knitting group and we swapped patterns and books and such all the time. Were we breaking the law? I would think once I bought a book of patterns if I wanted to share it, shouldn't I be able to? And at work, we all read the same authors. One will buy a book and then it gets passed around. Cuts our reading expenses. If libraries can do this, why can't I? And what if I find a great quilting book in the library - I can't use the pattern??? Ok, now I'm getting a headache. :) I want to do the right thing, just confused as to what exactly that is! Virg