> You tall me that this is going to happen to the pop-based songs that are passed off as 'folk' nowadays, and you might have made a point.

This is one basis (of several)for maintaining a distinction.

The words and lyrics of most copyrighted songs are jealously guarded. Furthermore, modern society is far more concerned with singing or playing something exactly as it was written than were the rural societies of the nineteenth century earlier.

Variation is key to the 1954 def. But singer-songwriter lyrics rarely vary - largely because we can listen to the recording again and again and correct ourselves.

So except for lesser forms like rugby songs (and now even these!), one key element of "folksong" has largely faded away. The same with "oral tradition."

Is what's left worth calling "folksong"? Obviously it depends on who you ask.