Thanks Charlie for your kind words about my tinkering.

Thanks too Anne. I was talking more about the conscious changes and unconscious changes that you mentioned & have had expierence with.
I wasn't concerned with the parodies & the legal & technical stuff but more on the control & (un/legal) rights of the authors but these threads do go where they want.
If I wrote a song & hear someone singing it differently & they got it that way from someone else & had no idea of the original, I see it as a waste of time & effot to pull them up on it. I'd also see it as rude to correct them in public or even on the side. I would be interested in how it came to be different but in the end I would think that if it eventually got sung in a different manner, that would mean it had been processed by the "folk mill" & in doing so would in all probably be a better song for it. Would I sing it the same way I wrote it? Probably not if I thought the different way were a better version, would I chase singers down to get them to change it back, I think not. But then how many of us write a song that turns out multi versions, actually I say that if any one sang a song that I wrote I'd be fairly lucky.

Thanks
Barry