Coca-Cola And The True Meaning Of Copyright

The new Coca-Cola marketing campaign in Italy puts on its bottles quotes from popular Italian songs. Of course this has been previously negotiated with the copyrights holders but not with the single artists that sold their song to the music label.

Technically speaking, Coca-Cola did nothing wrong and its activity is perfectly legal. But one of the featured singers, Caparezza, didn’t like his songs to be exploited the Coca-Cola way.

Under Italian Copyright Law, Caparezza and – broadly speaking – an artist have no actual protection in such case since once the tune has been sold to a music label, the musician only retains the “moral right” (mainly the right to be credited as the author, and the right to oppose any mutilation of his work.)

So the question is: whose interests copyright is supposed to take care of?