is the advertising industry trending toward product placement anyway?

I thought this youtube video was actually interesting for all the musicians out there actually pretty interesting for where the guy says "I see this as taking the notes from a beatles melody and rearranging the notes and putting a new guitar effect on it and calling it a new song."

This actually raises some interesting issues relative to parallels in how traditional songs are valued from a publishing rights world view. What he's actually showing on the video is key from one bar and resolving in the way our heads expect it to resolve based on a chord progression we're familiar with. I mean am I the only one that sees this. I know that mash-ups have fallen since the Grey Album days, which held a lot of controversy with the record label EMI, copyright holder of The Beatles, ordered Danger Mouse and retailers carrying the album to cease distribution.

The question I'm asking you is, how far from the original can you take it?