Reading that last post by Midchuck, I started speculating whether there are places where they insist on having a songlist to look over before they allow singers to perform? In case they sing someone else's song.

This whole idea of treating songs simply as property really does poison the waterhole. People up the thread have been saying that all traditional songs started off being made up by someone - but that's only true in the sense that they start of with something that someone made up, but that's probably not going to be what came down to us.

In the process of being passed along, songs change. People mishear lines and sing them differently, and they forget verses and cobble together a half-remembered replacement. You end up with different versions. And then someone mixes together different versions...

That is the process by which some great songs have been created. Treating songs simply as property is liable to get in the way of that happening.