I see a lot of people copying spells and rituals and things from books or webpages - even mailing lists, and putting the information up on their websites or posting it to a mailing list/forum/newsgroup etc.

It is actually illegal to reproduce (copy, photocopy etc.) anyone's work unless you have permission to do so.  So if you take a spell from a book, webpage etc. and post that to a mailing list, you have broken the law.

So how does that effect your Book Of Shadows?

Well if you find spells online and in books and then copy them into your personal Book Of Shadows, it is still illegal... but frankly, who is going to know.  What people DO get annoyed with is when their work is spread around, especially if proper credit is not given.  I assume that Authors would feel happier if you owned the book the spells etc. came from but just copied the work into your BOS (giving credit) ...

What could you do then?

Well, you could put "post-it notes" to mark the pages of Spells etc. you like in books you have (put the note so it pokes out a bit to mark the page).

You could write the heading of the spell into your BOS, with the book title, Author name, Page number and what you thought of the spell... and use it as a guide, but read/perform the spell from the book.

If you are going to put a spell etc. into your BOS, I would recommend putting the Author name, Book Title and page number, just for your own records...