Sorry Jim, I was in such haste to set the record straight that I didn't respond to your points to me.

Language:

It's not a matter of disproving a theory, as in science. It's about being understood in the wider world.

I have great sympathy with those who want to maintain the 54 definition as primary in discussions like this. Life would be much easier if there was a consensus now as there was then. But I'd suggest that while the intent of the definition is still completely valid, it has been undermined by a general shift in the meaning of one key word; 'folk.'

This in unfortunate, but it happens all the time. Whenever we want to understand an old defintion or law, we have to go back to the accepted meanings of the words, by the majority, at the time they were written.

For example, when the word 'gay' began to mean 'homosexual' rather than 'light-hearted' no doubt there were those who resisted it, but the natural force of change was too strong, and eventually the lexicographers just added a second definition. Today many people will say 'light-hearted' rather than 'gay' to avoid being misunderstood. Perhaps in time the old meaning will die out entirely - then we'll have to look in an old dictionary, from the time our source work was written, to understand a title like, for example, The Gay Gordons correctly.

It's a shame for the Old 54, but it happened. The definition is still good, but it needs either a sub-clause, or a new unambiguous word (well, unambiguous for the time being anyway)!

Copyright:

I understand that some bad things happened around the copyright of traditional material in the early days of the revival, particularly in Ireland - but i don't know enough to comment. I can only pass on the situation in the UK today as I understand it.

I do agree with you about the issue of collection on out-of-copyright material (though not on copyright arrangements, which I support as benign), and am actively and tenaciously seeking change with PRS on this.

In general:

I think I understand entirely where you are coming from, and have no quibble with anything you say concerning the areas you define, within your own definition. However, much of what people have been saying in this thread refers to issues that are not within that definition - and the problem has been caused by two conflicting uses of the same one word.

Let me make a stab at another analogy. I'm sorry if this also falls over, but it's just the way my mind works, ok? (no analogy ever stands up to close scrutiny anyway, they're just a device to try to help shed a new light on an old subject).

Lets take the word 'football,' about 20 years after William Web Ellis did his famous run.

I only use 'football' to describe the game that we now call soccer. Then someone at a party tells me he thinks that the art of defence has declined in English football. I tell him he's talking rubbish, because the English soccer team are the best defenders in the world. Only trouble is, he's talking about Rugby.

See what I mean?

Tom