Disclaimer: I'm not a copyright lawyer, just a writer interested in copyright issues. As such, this is simply my understanding of current copyright law. Laws can change and be interpreted differently, so I'm not advising any course of action or guaranteeing the accuracy of my statements. Do your own research to verify my information, if you're concerned.
There are exceptions to copyright laws for educational purposes that might apply here, so long as no one makes a financial profit for the copied materials.
Copyright law can be a bit tricky, but generally "private use" copies can be a gray area, but generally are considered protected unless mass printings and profit is involved. Thus it's probably legal to copy and give away a set of materials as long as no money or reimbursement changes hands and it isn't done in a large scale. It is a gray area though, both legally and ethically.
However, it perfectly and entirely legal (no gray area) to give originals copies away, so if anyone is willing to gift you with or sell their original materials (presumably because they don't want them any more) to you, they could do that.
It would have to go through snail mail though, so there would be some expense.
Also, ideas and information cannot be copyrighted only the way the information is presented, the specific written works, so if someone wanted to share the information, they would be free to do so, as long as they used their own/different words and visual format to do so.
Last edited by kaplods; 09-14-2013 at 07:48 PM.
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