The practice of illegal 'sharing' of other people's property on YouTube by disguising sound recordings as videos (to which the posters do presumably have some small claim) seems to be on the increase. I've noticed tracks lifted from Copper Family records put up that way recently. That's the point, I think: rules that are designed for home videos are being used as a cover for smuggling in audio recordings that would otherwise not be allowed.

Mostly this is being done by people who probably realise that they are 'getting round' what they think is an irksome regulation placing unnecessary restrictions on their personal freedom, and who don't understand that it's wrong. The BNP, however, have been making deliberate efforts to infiltrate the folk music scene; mostly as singer-songwriters, I think, but increasingly in the area of traditional song which, given the sometimes nationalist flavour of all folk musics, probably seems like a rather useful vehicle to them.

Whenever we seem to be beginning to get somewhere in re-establishing the idea (with elements of the cultural establishment if not much of the general populace) that England does actually have a traditional culture and that not all folk music is either American or Irish, people who hitherto took no interest in it whatever suddenly discover its potential use to them as a bandwagon.

It's already difficult enough to persuade some overly-careful people that the mere mention of the word 'English' is not in some fashion racist. If the BNP and their like are allowed to parasitize the movement, then the work is undermined. If people allow their work to be used in the advertising efforts of organisations of that sort (whether or not they stand to gain or lose financially) they risk not only damage to their own reputation (which is their choice) but also that of others and, indeed, the music itself. That isn't a decision that anyone has the right to make in a moral and ethical vacuum: I'm sure that I needn't repeat Edmund Burke in order to make that point.