Thanks artful Codger,

Many of the copyrights on early country music songs are not invalid, just because someone copyrighted a song that was not theirs doesn't mean they own the song.

They don't own the arrangement if they took the arrangement from someone else. The fact that a few words or the title were changed to avoid copyright infringement doesn't make it valid.

Now the copyright date is frozen at 1923 because of the Sony Bono law.
Copyright lawyers and huge corporations are intimidating us and preventing the fair use of many songs.

Peresonally I think it's wrong.

Richie