How many times will we try to define
the music we all love to sing?
How many threads will it take to describe
how long is this one piece of string?
And how many words will it take to agree
and for argument to lose its sting?
The answer, my friend... etc

Greg, you say "...if someone wants to include modern written songs in the category of folksongs, then they are duty bound to think up a good word to describe the things that used to be called folk songs". But by the same token, anyone who wants to hijack the word "folk" for the specific category of traditional songs, is also duty bound to think up a good word to describe the things that used to be called folk but are not traditional.

I know it's a circular argument, and therefore absurd. But for me the origins of this controversy are in the very fact that a group of people, no matter how learned and trustworthy, decided to pin a word of the English language down to a specific meaning, flying in the face of common usage (which is the proper way for language to evolve). Ever since then, the two worlds - common usage and rigid definition - have been drifting apart, and will continue to do so until one or the other becomes irrelevant. No guesses for which I think it is likely to be.