Read more about the initiative and the background behind it here.
Students may now face fines if courts find grounds for copyright infringement in cases involving the illegal sharing of digital textbooks.
The high proportion of students in higher education who illegally share digital textbooks has remained unchanged over the past seven years. After several years of awareness-raising efforts through the Os Der Elsker Viden (Those Who Love Knowledge) initiative, the Rights Alliance now considers it necessary to initiate concrete enforcement measures against the illegal sharing of digital textbooks.
The Rights Alliance has closely monitored developments since 2019 through Epinion’s annual surveys of students’ acquisition of digital textbooks. The latest survey from 2025 shows that 57% of students who use digital textbooks have obtained at least one textbook illegally. At the same time, 69% of students are aware that this practice is illegal, while 74% consider it acceptable to share books illegally with one another.
For many years, we have tried to reach students through dialogue and education, but the effect is not reflected in the measurements we have carried out over a seven-year period. When more than half still share textbooks illegally, we need to send a clearer signal. There must be consequences when the law is broken – just as there are in all other areas of society,
says Maria Fredenslund, Director of the Rights Alliance.
The aim is prevention – not punishment
From February, the Rights Alliance will work to bring cases against students who illegally share digital textbooks, in accordance with the rules on private prosecution under the Danish Copyright Act. Cases will be selected to clearly establish that the sharing of even individual digital textbooks is illegal. Students may be ordered to pay a fine to the state if the court finds that they have infringed copyright. This is intended to strengthen students’ perception of the link between the law and how it is enforced.
We do not wish to punish individuals, but to bring about a cultural change in which students understand that illegal sharing has consequences. At the same time, we encourage institutions to sanction the unacceptable behaviour that infringement of intellectual property rights represents – behaviour that is also subject to sanctions when one takes a closer look at institutions’ codes of conduct. When authorities and society put action behind our laws and rules, we are better able to motivate students to respect and comply with them,
says Maria Fredenslund.
Institutions’ efforts can reduce illegal consumption
The Rights Alliance has sent a briefing to educational institutions across the country, requesting their support in ensuring that the initiative achieves the intended preventive effect. In this briefing, institutions are encouraged to inform students about the intensified enforcement efforts and, more generally, to sanction copyright infringements when they become aware of them. In the student regulations of several educational institutions, violations of copyright are described as unacceptable behaviour that may result in sanctions.
The conditions for textbooks are also the conditions for education
When illegal sharing of textbooks becomes the norm among students, it has serious consequences – not only for Danish educational publishers, but for the quality of higher education in Denmark as a whole. Educational publishers play a crucial role in developing academically quality-assured, up-to-date, Danish-language learning materials tailored to national programmes, curricula, and societal conditions.
When publishers’ financial foundations are eroded, their ability to invest in new titles, professional editorial work, pedagogical development, and ongoing updates is reduced. This leads to a narrower range of teaching materials, lower academic quality in education, and increased dependence on foreign or unauthorized learning resources. In turn, this weakens Danish academic terminology, the pedagogical coherence of educational programmes, and ultimately students’ learning outcomes. Illegal sharing is therefore not merely a copyright issue, but a structural problem for the Danish knowledge society and for the ambition of strong, competitive higher education institutions.
The scale of illegal sharing among students has now become so extensive that it effectively threatens the entire market for Danish textbooks. If this development continues, we quite simply risk no longer having a sustainable textbook market in Denmark. This is not only a problem for publishers – it is a problem for the quality of higher education and for our shared knowledge base. As an industry, we have a responsibility to speak out and to act when we see a risk that could negatively affect education and students. If we, with our market insight, do not take a stand now – then who will?
asks Henrik Gejlager, Director of Gyldendal Education and Chair of the Executive Committee of Danske Undervisningsforlags Forretningsudvalg.
Read more about the initiative and the background behind it here.
Press contact:
For further information, contact: Ditte Rie Agerskov, Secretary General at the Rights Alliance on +45 22 73 68 68 or on Ditte.agerskov@rettighedsalliancen.dk
Find the press release here.