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Copyright: For Students

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“You must not infringe copyright, or break the terms of licences for software or other material.”

University of Hull, ICT Acceptable Use Policy (2021)

Copying for Private Study

ReadUK copyright law permits anyone to copy/save material from a book, journal, website, audio/video recording or social media platform for their own private study,  providing you are accessing the original legally, and your use is "fair dealing" (see below).

Printing, photocopying or scanning, ripping or downloading, screen capture, photography or filming, recording and transcribing are all treated in law as 'making a copy', therefore subject to copyright law.

Your lecturer does not have an automatic right to make copies for students.  For information about what lecturers are allowed to copy,  see the section of this guide For Teachers.

How much is 'fair'?

Your copy should not be a substitute for paying for the material, and shouldn't reach a wider audience than the original. 

Be mindful that publishers derive income from selling e-books and e-journals to libraries, even when access via the Library website appears to be unrestricted.

Material which is free to access online (including websites, journalism, social media and image galleries) is also protected by copyright, even though you may not be able to find a copyright statement or licence terms.  

Thumbs upProbably fair thumb downProbably not fair
Photocopying or scanning a few pages from a Library book Copying a different chapter every week until you've got the whole book
Downloading an article from an e-journal to read offline Emailing the pdf to a friend at another university
Snipping a photo from a news website to use in an assignment Publishing the photo in a student newspaper
Embedding an audio/video clip in a presentation to classmates Uploading the presentation onto Slideshare or a similar platform

Assessments (including dissertations)

Under UK law, students are permitted to reproduce copyright material in classroom activities or assessments, for the attention of classmates, tutors, and examiners (CPDA s 32). Your use must be 'fair dealing':

  • Fully attributed
  • No more than is necessary to illustrate your point
  • Not shared with anyone who's not a participant in the educational activity
  • No impact on the rights-holder's market for the work.

See the panel to the left for some examples of 'fair dealing' in a university context.

If students' work will be shared with a wider audience once it's been assessed (including PhD theses), it may be harder to defend use of copyright material as "fair dealing".  Check the section of this guide For Researchers for advice about writing for publication, and protecting your own copyright.

See also the section of this guide covering Learning Materials for some recommended sources of AV, music and images which are licensed for use by students and teachers for presentations, assessments and (in some cases) extra-curricular activities.

Accessible copies

When you're unable to use the material in its original format, and there's no accessible version available, you are entitled to copy the whole work into a different format which you can access more easily, or ask someone else to copy it for you.