"....and seem willing to listen to reasonable explanations of why they are in the 'wrong'"
I would happily accept your point and listen to such explanations, this not a one-way street - so far, no sign of that changing.
I was never "annoyed, not up till now, anyway, amused to mildly irritated with a pinch of incredulity at how somebody could lift and sell the work of others while at the same time, be street-wise enough to copyright the products of their/our efforts - but let that pass.
We entered into an unwritten contract with all the singers we recorded that no use would be made of those recordings without their permission, and that any money arising from them should either go to them or ploughed back into traditional music - we have always honoured that undertaking.
It was never a matter of 'ownership' or 'copyright' of the songs or the recordings and it was for our benefit as much as theirs - try persuading singers to part with their songs when they learned that, not only are they being sold, but also copyrighted (is is hard to notice that nobody has seen fit to respond to my point about Peter Kennedy) other than Mike Yates' mention of his sharp practices.
Kennedy behaved similarly as this in selling and copyrighting material that he and other people collected, often without their permission, and in two spectacular cases, without even their knowledge.
That behaviour did inestimable damage to the song traditions of these islands which has yet to be put right.
Apart from our collecting, we also spent a considerable among of time and energy attempting to set up an English traditional music archive to bring together some of the known collections and to entice out tome of the large number of small, private ones i order to make them available.
We have not yet begun to scratch the surface, not in the England anyway.
The sort of behaviour here can set back any possibility of it ever happening years.
Of course I'm more than happy to overlook this if it were a genuine mistake or even thoughtless laziness (though the absence of any indication of an attempt to contact either singers families or collectors while being prepared to go to the lengths of copyrighting the recordings casts some doubt on either of these.
I am not prepared to let pass a failure to acknowledge any potential damage done, nor am I prepared to accept being made to feel guilty about feeling increasingly angry about the dismissive attitude on display here.
This type of behaviour wouldn't be given the light of day were it applied to an other musical or art form - sorry, Mr Jagger, just thought you'd sound better with an indifferently played banjo accompaniment - didn't think you'd mind if we sold it - give us a break folks!!
Damn - just missed University Challenge!!
Jim Carroll