But remember you have to be able to PROVE that.

The learned counsel on the thread will undoubtedly correct me if I'm wrong on this, but surely "copyright" means the right to make a new independent copy of any public domain material, no matter what source you found it in - doesn't it?

So if you write the Keats poem out again, my assumption has always been that they can't touch you; and the same goes for, say, a piece of music by Bach or Handel, even if you first see it in a published edition. (And where else are you going to see stuff like that?) This leads directly to my next question:

The tunes published in Bronson are copyright.

Does that mean that they were all written by someone who died later than 1938? I'm not trying to be sarcastic, I'm genuinely confused! How can Bronson have copyright on known traditional ballad melodies that have been sung for centuries?

In the UK the PRS will hammer the premises if they do not have a PRS licence, and they do not scare off easy!

No kidding. And instead of enhancing revenue from music, all it seems to be doing is killing it off entirely so that nobody gets nuffink. As I hear it, shops can't even have a transistor radio playing on their premises without getting penalised if they don't have a license - is that true? Did Kwikfit really lose a court case over this or is that internet scare-talk?

Hmmmmm, let's think, hard: What are they going to do, pay a zillion quid or shut the music off/out?