For international law buffs, the ‘moral rights’ portion of Egyptian copyright law is a fascinating example of U.S. courts handling foreign law. Unlike the U.S., Egypt has two different licenses for copyrighted material: “economic rights”(which apply to unaltered originals) and “moral rights,” which must be obtained if you want to “mutilate” the source material by distorting it, or in Jay-Z’s case, sample from it. Jay-Z only licensed the “economic rights” to mechanically reproduce Homody’s work, originally the theme music for the 1957 Egyptian film Fata Ahlami.
