It's not found there.
In short, it's "the calf belongs to the cow" - that the copy of the book does not belong to the copier, but to the owner of the original.
What it means is that if you copy a text, you do not have the right to allow someone else to copy it. You own the copy, not the copy right. Simple as that.
It's in Guardian of the Forest, in the Durenmar section IIRC.
Cow & Calf when applied to texts is very nearly modern copyright law. I expect there's an open-text movement within the Order too... although only Iberian and Levant magi are likely to know what a gnu is. 
Gnu is Not Unix, what's so complicated about that? 
IMHO copying books on magic - be it Arts, lab texts or arcane abilities - gets devaluated if any literate monkey can do it. The RAW indicated you need some form of knowledge of the subject in order to avoid corrupting the copy. But is Magic Lore enough? Or do you need Magic Theory?
And how restricted is magic theory anyway? Can anybody learn that? Or du you need to be Gifted for it to have any meaning? That is my oppinion. So covenants who have a scribe able to do all their magical copying work will need to find a failed apprentice, someone with a flawed/damaged Gift.
Also, this makes having apprentices more valuable, since they now have something useful to do. And for a further bonus, it will minimuze the differences between the total exp for a freshly gauntleted magus from RAW as compared to an apprentice going through 15 years of gaming in an established covenant. This latter situation is more likely to allow the apprentice some study time with the good books, thus he becomes much more powerful that a RAW character. Maybe some of this cna be remedied by needing the apprentice to do other stuff, like copying. If you don't need your apprentice for a season, you are likely to send him to study. That's how we tend to do it. And if you don't use the apprentice much in the lab, then all those seasons will be spent accruing more exp than the measly 2 Exposure he'd have gotten otherwise.
The apprentice-in-play issue is primarily one of players being extra-nice to their apprentices. If a magus isn't using their apprentice in a season, they probably aren't using their lab either. Vis extraction, arcane connection fixing, minor charged items, etc. are all things your apprentice can be doing instead of leaching from your covenant library.
I'm not sure forcing Gifted characters to do copying is going to change apprentice treatment. If a player wants their apprentice to have decent arts/abilities, they'll devote time to it regardless. If they want to use their apprentice as a lab-slave, they'll find enough things to keep the apprentice busy.
Forcing magi to be the ones who do copying of magical texts simply acts as a brake on magi advancement. In short sagas that's probably just going to be frustrating. In longer sagas it results in less powerful magi. If that's what you prefer, then make a requirement for Gift to copy texts. Personally I think that's more book-keeping and less fun.
It specifically says MT.
Apparently not very restricted at all.
RAW says you need the gift to be a lab assistant, not to copy books.
RAW also mentions over and over again examples of unGifted lab assistants. But yes, you do not need the Gift at all to copy books. If you have intelligence and perception -5 and the dreadful characteristics you can still be the best scribe in the order of hermes without problems if you have some MT
Cheers,
Xavi
The rules state that you need MT for copying magical Arts or Parma, but Realm Lore for Supernatural Abilities. No spec ability is required to copy texts on other Arcane Abilities (but that would make some sense in some cases imo.)
One solution would be to have increasing levels of MT/ML required for copying (higher Levels?) of texts. This would not stop mundane copiers, but it would mean that they have to be more studied and prevent any literate schlep from studying MT for 1 season and then diving into a Level 25 epitome on Vim.
If it takes Level 6 in an Ability to be considered a "skilled professional" (Covenants, p 88 inset, etc.) for purposes of bonus on binding, illuminating, etc., then something of that caliber may be necessary for a mundane to fully appreciate the subtle nuances of Magic.
Well, yeah, but scribes aren't really expected to appreciate subtle nuances - they're expected to copy the words correctly. Being able to parse one sentence at a time should be enough for copying faithfully; I don't see the need to spend seven solid advancement-years on Magic Theory to achieve that.
Potentially it may be more than just words, the text may include special letters and marks, which might be missed.
Though i agree that demanding a HIGH score is a bit much...
Yeah, that's the rulebook's excuse for requiring a Magic Theory score at all, IIRC - otherwise it would just be copying words as normal.
Actually I seem to recall that in the middle ages many copyists were illiterate; they could not comprehend that which they copied, but copied letters as if they were pictures.
I think this is false: before 1200, monks did most of the scribing. After 1300 the universities were running, and most monks bought their books from stationers like everyone else, and they had lots of students to do the work.
I'm not sure about the role of the colon: you seem to imply that, since monks did most of the scribing (which I agree with) then the scribes were literate. Many monks were illiterate.
I can certainly say from personal experience that you can copy a text without understanding the meaning (though knowing the alphabet helps a lot).
Can you provide a reference for many monks being illiterate? Not lay brothers, monks who did copying work? I find this an unusual claim.
How can you know for sure that you did it correctly, and accurately?
Having done so myself I know I can't double-check. But considering I either scanned or photocopied to do so, I would suspect the copies I made are correct and accurate. And neither the photocopier nor the scanner needed to understand the language.
The point of having Magic Theory 1 is so that you know if there are little details that are important so that you don't have to be as good an artist. But essentially a good enough artist (forger) can copy a page so well just about no one can tell the difference.
Chris
In other words, do a 1:1 copy graphically instead of in words.