What is copyright?
Under the Australian Copyright Act, a majority of material produced is automatically protected by copyright. Material does not have to include the ©to be protected.
Copyright gives the copyright owner a right to take action if somebody else uses their material (without permission) in one of the ways reserved to the copyright owner, unless an exception to infringement applies.
What you can and can't do
In many cases students are able to copy material without gaining permission, as the Copyright Act provides a fair dealing exception for research and study. However, this exception only applies to uses that are directly related to your study, and is unlikely to extend to other purposes, such as uploading to web sites set up to share study documents.
How does this relate to Academic Misconduct?
The Academic Integrity Policy defines types of academic misconduct. One of which is "uploading a copy of a subject outline or other subject or course materials to a website or server without express permission of the University, for any other reason than personal use (permission should be sought from the Subject Coordinator for subject materials or the Legal Services Unit for all other material)". As such, some breaches of copyright may be treated by the University as academic misconduct and dealt with accordingly.