A September 2022 decision of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), Safarov v Azerbaijan, reminds us that failing to protect authors’ rights is not just an economic issue. It can be a breach of human rights. The ECtHR case is not an isolated instance. A jurisprudence on the human rights of authors is emerging in an array of different contexts. It offers new ways of thinking about domestic policy debates about the rights of authors and states’ obligations to protect them. The ECtHR decision concerned a book that an NGO posted online without the author’s consent. In line with its earlier decisions, the ECtHR confirmed that the protection of “possessions” in the...
