My responses would be pretty much the same as George's:

1. Yes, the Internet is an ideal medium for distributing any music, not just folk, and I agree with George that although it can be exploited in the 'wrong' way, on balance it's beneficial to artists (especially those not already well-known) as it heightens awareness of their work. In any case if I put mp3s on a website I would normally make them of lower recording quality than they would get if they paid for the music, or put up excerpts rather than full tracks.

2. If someone downloads an mp3 from an artist's site, that isn't stealing. It would be if they sold it to someone else. I would be unlikely to know if they did, but if as I said above, it's lower quality anyway, I am willing to take the risk. I figure that if anyone really likes the music they'll buy it to get the higher quality version (maybe I'm being naive there though).

3. I didn't know about Creative Commons but I do now thanks to treewind. If you put work on the web for download, I doubt any copyright will provide full protection (I've had non-musical work copied from the web and was annoyed at first, but then thought "plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery" - and that I couldn't be a**ed to take them to court - life's too short).

4. I completely agree with George on this point. There should be no distinction between different types of music as far as copyright is concerned. Why on earth should there be?