On the MoA thread Jim said
"it was Professor "Bob" Thomson, who was the first to put forward the extent to which folk songs appeared on broadsides (circa 1970) and who based his PhD on the subject"

I read that at first as referring to collected songs having previously appeared on broadsides, but realised Jim couldn't have meant that Prof. Thomson was the first to point that out, because many scholars and collectors had done so before 1970 (and others since).

So I wondered what Jim had meant and asked
"Was Prof. Thomson referring to the particular case of songs that appear to have started with the "folk" and then got printed?"

I don't understand Jim's reply.
"It wasn't an issue then - anywhere
That's why Topic named their set of recordings 'The Voice of the People' and Bert Lloyd called his magnificent thirteen-part series The Songs of The People'
It's why Child called his collection 'The English and Scottish Popular Ballads - popular = "of the people"

Without doubt, songs that were collected and labelled as "folk songs" had mostly appeared earlier in print. The bone of contention here is how many of them had existed as songs among the "folk" before they were printed. Was that what Prof. Thomson was addressing?

If not, what did you mean?