The idea of copyright, originally conceived as a means of protecting the right of individual authors to fair compensation for their work, has undergone a sea change in recent decades. It is now frequently invoked to safeguard the profits of corporate marketers of widely-used media and software products, and in this context has given rise to a surprising new conflict: the collision of copyright and human rights.

Copyright and Human Rights is the first comprehensive analysis of this emerging nexus of legal issues. In eight incisive essays, well-known authorities in both copyright law and human rights law present in-depth analysis and discussion of such essential topics as the following:

• the human rights credentials of copyright
• the relations between copyright and freedom of speech and of expression, from the perspectives of both North American and European law
• the impact of U.S Supreme Court decision in Eldred
• the relevance to copyright of the public interest defense in European law; and
• the fundamental rights of privacy in an intellectual property environment.

In the years to come, more and more lawyers will be confronted with issues involving the interaction of intellectual property and human rights. As a groundbreaking work focusing on the copyright aspect, Copyright and Human Rights will be seen as a cornerstone of the debate. Practitioners, academics and policymakers in both fields will immediately recognize its value as a springboard to the informed future development of this new and crucial area of legal theory and practice.