Homiletics: Intellectual Property and Authorship Paradigms

Last semester, in John Logie's RIPPI class, we talked a lot about authorship and intellectual property through the ages. When we talked about the medieval period, Logie noted that at that time, most people didn't think about knowledge in ownership terms. Knowledge was from God: It was freely given by God, so in turn, Christians should freely share it. Yesterday, someone was telling me about a pastor who, some church members alleged, got his sermons from the Internet and didn't cite them. Another person, a member of the church in question, didn't see anything wrong with that. She said, "Of course you get help. Of course you look at books and Web sites. No one writes all that by himself." That got me thinking. What are the paradigms of intellectual property and authorship when it comes to homiletics? A quick search for "intellectual property homiletics" led me to the text of a "public lecture" given by a minister/theologian, and preceding the transcript of the lecture, I found this:

NOTE: All public lectures appear by permission of their authors. These lectures are posted as a service to our readers, with the trust that all conventions of fair use and respect for intellectual property will be followed with respect to this material.

I see a conflict here. To what extent is the "freely given, freely shared" paradigm still in effect? Could be quite an interesting dissertation topic for someone!

Cross-posted at Kairosnews.