"I believe it is our ethical obligation to ponder it."
Really! Why? As has been pointed out before, a technique is not copy-writable.

Here is my 2 cents for what it is worth. If I know of a technique that could help a fellow quilter to get better results and they ask me for help I am more than willing to offer whatever help I can. Once a technique is in my head, I am doing really good to remember that, it is very doubtful I will remember if it is something I thought of, have always known, was shown to me by another amazing quilter, was read online, or in a book, or seen in a video. I have a big and full life full of quilting and non quilting stuff, and limited space in my brain, those are not details I am going to remember down the line of time.

A pattern is only copyright if the owner, designer, developer, etc., filed for a copyright, paid the fees and most likely hired an attorney to navigate through the system. Most patterns are not copyright, it is an expensive and lengthy process. Patterns that are copyright will state it on the patterns with the date it was copyrighted as well as some wording like all rights reserved. Other patterns that are not copyright may have some wording stating for personal use only, cannot be copied or distributed without permission from the designer.

Many years ago I started work in the field of advertising, I learned a lot about copyright and ownership in it's various forms, and as a quilter (and a musician) I've been most interested in the "personal use" part of it all.

As far as quilting goes, you can see anything you like and make a direct copy for yourself or be inspired by it and make an original copy or turn it into an original design. The problem comes then with what happens next. If you show it, you should credit the originator. As already mentioned some patterns already come with the disclaimer about not to be used for re-sale. Some times that actually means the pattern itself, other times the end project. The typical home sewer does not need to worry so much about that, but yeah -- if you take someone else's work and creativity and then make a business out of it you might just morally owe someone for that even if the legal claim isn't quite as good and often the legal claim is very good.

Because the amount of change required to make something "original" varies. Just using different fabrics could be enough. Slight changes can be enough, or not enough if it is really distinctive. For example, I drew up a Hazel Hedgehog that's slightly different mathematically from the design by Elizabeth Hartman. But I know it is completely based on her design and that's the only reason I did it, so I bought the pattern I figured it was only fair.

Or recently here on the board I helped someone redesign a block. Although I am fully comfortable that the way I resized and redrew the block and wrote the very different directions was an original product, again, the only reason we were doing it was to copy something someone else did and I elected not to share those publicly.

I was at a quilt show yesterday and much to my surprise there was a quilt there that was the same block as one of my current projects. That quilter gave credit to the pattern used, while I know the block as a traditional/free use (no one can copyright a traditional block, we can all make churn dashes if we want!). But her project was very different than mine in colors and placement. If I decide to show my quilt I won't be attributing it to anyone but myself.

I know there have been original works of mine that I have seen later done very similarly by someone else. Great minds think alike after all. I have some projects of mine that are original and I hesitate sometimes to post pictures of them, I don't mind sharing the idea at all -- but I would mind someone taking that and turning it into a commercial pattern.

Copyright/intellectual property does matter to each of us, whether it is pirating or performing music or in quilting. But there are just so many notes and so many ways to fit triangles and squares together :)

the issue is not techniques.
the issue is whether or not we can plagiarize a video, tutorial or pattern written by somebody else.

why are ethics important?
really?
if you ask this question, the answer will always fall on deaf ears.:hunf: