There seems to be no hope that this thread will ever lurch back on course for more than a few minutes at a time, so I'll restrict myself here to comment on a single point that Ralph made a little earlier.

So far as the Grainger material is concerned, 'Celtic Music' owns the rights in the 'new' masters prepared by Bill Leader, not in the original wax cylinder recordings, which are now, I think, the property of the Grainger Museum in Australia. There are copies at the VWML and in the late Peter Kennedy's archive; probably others elsewhere. Peter used to sell cassette and CDR copies, though I don't know whether, strictly, he had the legal right to do so.

It may well be that Dave Bulmer couldn't re-issue that material (even if he wanted to, which seems unlikely) without negotiating a new license agreement with the copyright holders. Equally, there is no obvious reason why new, digitally optimised masters cannot be made from copies of the original cylinders (or even from the cylinders themselves if they are still playable), provided the appropriate permissions are obtained. 'Celtic Music' would have no rights, moral or legal, over such.