R: R: [Rumori] Beatallica update

[Nicola Battista]

in Italy and other european countries we have a strong division between
economic and "moral" rights when talking about authors' rights.
Moral rights cannot be sold to anyone, while you can always give away
for free copies of your work and renounce to any economic right, or you
can license, even sell 100% of your rights to someone else. But still we
are talking only of monetary rights, not moral rights such as the right
to modify the original work, paternity, the use of a pseudonym or
publishing the work as an "anonymous" work.
Now I am not sure whether or not this clearly exists in US law; I
remember an electronic version of Beatles snogs with loads of samples
from other artists blocked in 1990 here in Italy apparently under
requests from some Beatles members; and also Oasis, in UK, while
allowing a lounge cover of "Wonderwall" by Mike Flowers Pops, denied
permission for a reggae cover of the same title, if I'm not wrong.
Now this type of stuff - at least in Italy - is allowed only to authors;
a publisher shouldn't allowed to say "you cannot do trash metal covers
of Beatles" just because a publisher should have no title over moral
rights. Is there anything like this in the American system?

Kembrew, I remember that thing about Guthrie... but if I'm not wrong,
TRO is also the publisher who basically stole Solomon Linda's copyright
in "Mbube" when publishing "Wimoweh" that later became "The lion sleeps
tonight"). So maybe TRO is not the best example out there. ;)

DjB