The battle over Jay Z’s “Big Pimpin” still continues. The Egyptian composer is now steering his legal battle with Jay Z and Timbaland away from sensational analogies and back to the issue of moral rights.
The decade-long legal battle centers on a sample of Baligh Hamdy’s 1957 work “Khosara Khosara,” which was used in “Big Pimpin.'” U.S. District Judge Christina Snyder cut a 2015 trial short, finding Hamdy’s heir Osama Fahmy lacked standing to pursue the claims because he had given up his rights in the work by licensing it.
In an appeals court brief filed Wednesday (Mar 1), Fahmy’s attorney Keith Wesley argues that his client may have licensed the economic rights to “Khosara” but, under Egyptian law, he could not have given up his moral rights to “prevent unauthorized fundamental alterations” to the work — and the only relevant question is whether he can enforce that right in the U.S.
In many other countries, including Egypt, the owner of the rights in an artistic work has some control over what kinds of adaptations can be made to it. Fahmy argues that Jay Z’s rhymes about hoes, drugs and spendin’ cheese are morally objectionable and he has the right to keep his ancestor’s work from being associated with it — but the concept of moral rights generally isn’t recognized the U.S.
“Setting aside semantics and dicta (and accusations and invective), this case boils down to a rather unremarkable proposition: Plaintiff owns, under the law of the country of origin of his copyright (Egypt), the right to protect his copyright from fundamental changes, and the U.S. Copyright Act (17 U.S.C.,106(2)) recognizes the right owned by Plaintiff and expressly prohibits Americans from violating Plaintiff’s right,” writes Wesley.
Therefore, he argues, Fahmy should be able to sue for copyright infringement in “the only court that would have the power to stop Defendants’ extensive, continuing, unauthorized, and (yes) vulgar and unfortunate distortion of Plaintiff’s work in America.”
Wesley is asking the 9th Circuit to grant Fahmy judgment as a matter of law in regards to whether Jay Z and Timbaland are liable for copyright infringement, even though Snyder didn’t reach the issue.
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