"Since when did musical traditions take much notice of the wording of the law, Tom? It might have relevance for the PRS or whatever, but as far as a session musician is concerned, there's no difference between a tune composed last week by Harrison Birtwistle and one composed 300 years ago by Anon (unless your session mates or the puinters know). The problem is to work out how to play it and make it fit in with your sort of music. "

Tune traditions have not taken much notice of the wording of the law in the past, no, but tune musicians are no more exempt from it than any other law-abiding citizen.

Copyright law may be a clumsy instrument (and who needs any more of THEM in sessions) but it does exist for good reasons, and without it many things we take for granted would disappear (including important things like medicine).

There are three good reasons why we tune sessionisas have a duty to be aware of copyright law and moral ownership - however inconvenient and irrelevant that may seem.

The first is so that it can be up to copyright holders, not us, to decide if they want to exercise their right to a royalty (very few do, but the principle exists and it's important - for copyright in general). This is less of an issue in sessions, but more so in recordings and paid performances. But we should remember that tunes are learned in sessions and then taken away and used for fee-earning work. A culture of attribution would reduce the frequency of copyright material being wrongly attributed as PD, and royalties being denied to composers who do want them.

The second is that there are many of us who would like trad sessions to be licence free. The first step (something that's been discussed in various places, including by me with PRS) would be to firm up the existing casual exemption, wherein we can make a statement that only PD tunes are being played. We can only do that (legally) if we know the tunes really ARE PD. The second step would be to formalise that process* and allow composers legally to permit free use of their work in prescribed circumstances (such as sessions), whereas not in others (such as use for a TV programme theme tune - which would earn a fortune). At the moment it's all or nothing. Failure to register means the tune is PD. Register and it's illegal to play it in a session without a licence. Some of us would like to see a half-way house.

(*I agree with everyone who hates the ideas of formalisation in folk - but the way things are going I believe it's wise to sort out these grey areas BEFORE we get stamped on, as we were over PEL).

The third is that creative skills are not widely respected in folk circles (songs and tunes), and this has led to the role of composers and authors being diminished, and attribution being seen as an irrelevance. This has other implications beyond the legal, but touches on musicalogical issues such as provenance, collection and (re) arrangements.

Its a pain, but that's just how it is.

Tom