"but even the 1954 definition has been discredited in academic circles. No-one in ethnomusicology or study of folklore now accepts that knowing an author has any relevance to the subject at all."
Not following you.
"The International Council also stressed the fact that the term folk music, which includes folk songs, can be "applied to music which has originated with an individual composer and subsequently has been absorbed into the unwritten living tradition of a community"
"Discredited???"
Don't think that knowing the composer of a song has ever been an issue.
It's about a process, not origin.
Jim Carroll