max pointed this thread out to me and i figured i could shed some light on it.

back in the jazz day (the 50's i guess) all the groups had their "book" which they took around with them and had all of their tunes written out in them. eventually people started assembling books that were bootleged either from ear or from stealing from these books. a fake book was a collection of sheet music or tunes that were not authorized (used with permission, etc.) the standard fake book that all the jazz guys use is called the "real book," the self titled answer to the "fake book."

the "real book" is all hand written and contains no copyrights, which makes it more desirable because you can have all the tunes in one book. there are tunes that you can't get in the "legal fake books" because the estates of some of the heavy hitters (gershwin or porter - i can't remember which) try them out of such collections. if you don't have to worry about copyrights, you have freedom to print whatever tunes you want.

anyway, i think that's the fake book from the jazz angle.