Like Chet I am uncomfortable with the idea that folk music and by implication those interested in it are anti intellectual. I assumed from the context of this thread that what Gargolyle meant to imply was a fine indifference to the laws of copyright and the whole concept of ideas being "property". If this was so then I agree wholeheartedly, if I produce something, whether a song or an improved method of modelling a business process on a computer system, I would like to be given acknowledgement for my efforts, it would not occur to me to try and make money out of it.

If I was wrong, and Chet's interpretation correct, then it is as he said, the process of promoting a climate antipathetic to any learning which cannot be immediately turned into profit is prevalent in New Zealand as in America, and one must assume that it is based on the belief that the production of an illiterate and un questioning population will provide a quiescent market and labour force. The 30 second sound bite and the sitcom have replaced religion as the opiate of the masses.

Pete M