Devon wrote: <Is it legal to read a book borrowed from a library in England? After all, you haven't paid for it. If not, why do we have libraries? I do not think that the copying of a pattern from a library book for personal use would be considered illegal in the US.>
Authors in the UK register the ISBN of their books with the Public Lending Right. A sum is set aside to be distributed to authors depending on the number of borrowings each year. A sample of all borrowings are taken from selected libraries and the total number of borrowing of all books is divided into the sum allocated to determine the sum payable per borrowing. Authors then get that sum multiplied by the number of times their book has been borrowed.
When I was teaching, the local authority had a license to copy for educational purposes, and we had to enter into a record book the number of pages and copies made from each book. All copies made from any source, whether copyrighted or not including any material written by the teacher, had to be entered and the school was only allowed a tiny percentages of "forgotten to be entered" copies.
The last time I took a lace book into a local copy shop to copy the pricking, I was refused on the grounds of copyright. They would only copy it if I got a letter from the author giving me permission to do it, even though I pointed out that it was meant to be copied and used as a pattern, and the page in the book would be destroyed if I pricked the book page. Gather they'd recently had problems after copying from a book. That was when I bought a scanner.
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