What It's Like To...Be an Entertainment Lawyer in Egypt

“[But] all laws that regulate art in Egypt are about banning something,” explains Othman. And that prompted his decision to learn how to ensure artists’ rights in societies that historically have worked to ban certain voices. As the founder of Othman Media Law, he specializes in the legal framework governing the work produced by filmmakers, musicians and visual artists, as well as production houses, music labels and other entities working within the culture and entertainment sector.

According to Othman, the origin of artistic censorship in Egypt dates back to colonial times. When influential politician and lawyer Mohammad Farid published papers against English occupation, England issued a law protecting the copyright of English books — which are sometimes cited in these critical papers — in Egypt, in an effort to stop critical publications.

“That’s why we need to understand every law and what happened for this law to be made,” says Othman. His job as a legal advisor for a number of arts and media production companies, as well as local and foreign cultural centers, is to explain laws and contracts in simple terms to ensure complete understanding of artists' rights.

Othman speaks to OkayAfrica about the unique ecosystem that is entertainment law in North Africa, some of the cases he’s had to handle, and what his current focus is as an entertainment lawyer in the region, in segments edited for length and clarity.

Mahmoud Othman: My interest in entertainment law began with research into the 16 laws that governed the media, issued since that first colonial law by the English occupiers. Since 2014, 10 new laws have been issued to regulate art more strongly, without artists or production companies becoming more aware of the legal frameworks of their work.

I wonder all the time how in Egypt — which affects the whole region through its culture — production houses and artists don’t know the basics of the laws that regulate their profession. Artists treat their work as a hobby, but the first thing they should do before starting to work is to know how this work is regulated. There’s a misconception that they don’t need awareness in order to make art.

The first legal case I attended was against a belly dancer accused of public immodesty, followed by a case against another belly dancer who performed wrapped in the Egyptian flag and was imprisoned for one year. This led to artists developing more self-censorship, because they were in fear of such repercussions.

Different artistic professions began facing such cases and upon attending sessions in courts, I started working on and researching the practical and theoretical aspects of these cases. By authoring articles and legal studies published on platforms across Egypt and the SWANA region, I connected with people working in the legal field and defending artists in Kenya, Ethiopia, South Africa, Berlin, India and Japan.

Across the world, copyright is covered by the Berne Convention; in the Arab world, laws governing artists' work are almost identical due to the impact of the political conditions in the region, which led to the creation of syndicates as censorship against artists.

I took on cases to defend artists who were in prison and began working towards spreading awareness that would prevent imprisonment by specializing in obtaining permits for artists. My work gained recognition in 2016, when the Ministry of Justice issued a decree that all musicians must become members of a syndicate and could be arrested if they didn’t pay money to this syndicate to earn a permit.

We challenged this decision at the Administrative Causes Court by filing a case, and won it in less than four months — which was extraordinary. We then requested that the case be transferred to the High Constitutional Court, the only court in Egypt that is allowed to cancel a law.

By then, many people wanted to work with me and invited me to give training to workers in the Ministry of Culture in Cairo and other Egyptian cities. I was afraid at first, because I had won too many cases against the Ministry of Culture, but they were generous and wanted to work collectively, so they started becoming more supportive.

Having created a relationship of reconciliation between government institutions and artists, my work has now entered a new phase: ensuring artists’ rights vis-a-vis production houses. The Ministry of Culture censors content, but not contracts and how much the production house pays artists — that depends on the market and the work. Now we’re working on a clause that guarantees transparency, so that artists know they have rights for their songwriting.

This work, which is a milestone in my journey defending artists, includes offering legal training to artists and building an archive for all laws and divisions that govern the media world. An important and simple lesson is that you need to understand contracts as an adult human being; if you don’t comprehend what you're seeing in that contract it means there’s a problem.