I go down to the pub, I talk to my friends. Anyone can overhear what I am saying, copy it down, recycle it, do what they like with it.

Still down in the pub. I sing a few of my songs. Why is that so different? Or some of the words I say might be described as a poem. And we are supposed to stick a cage round the words so they become private property?

The only reason I can make a song is because I have heard other songs, and live in a world where there are other people I'm involved with.

One the most common things that people who make songs say is that you don'yt really make up songs half the time, you just seem to pick them up in mid-air, you find them floating past, and have the sense to grab them and hold on to them.

That can reasonably entitle you perhaps to some kind of finder's fee and privileges - but the idea that copyright should extend past the lifetime of the person who made up the song is simply ridiculous.

And the idea that someone can sell that kind of personal property to someone else, so that they might have to end up paying money in order to sing their own song - I find that slightly disgusting.