Jim - with respect - this post is about contemporary (presumably contemporary with us),and therefore "newly composed" music. If it didn't have a composer it wouldn't exist (Hebrews 3:4), and neither would the music you specialise in. Whether the composers names are forgotten or not is really irrelevant. Should O'Carolan's works be disregarded, out of almost the entire Irish folk repertoire, because we know his name. Or Neil Gow's from the Scottish, or James Hill's from the English (or even Purcell for that matter - eg "The Hole in the Wall")?

Please let different folks' concepts of what folk music is lie peacably alongside each other. We are all musicians (and not excluding singers, poets, actors), from whatever subdivision of the art, classical, folk, jazz, pop even. We play music for our pleasure, and hopefully the pleasure of those around us. Some, like you, have had the privelege (and I know also the hard work) of being able to make a study of a part of the wide musical spectrum, and so added to our understanding and apreciation. And we are all the richer for it.

Regarding copyright.
Iains - Once you've let a tune loose in the wild, you don't really "own" it. You may have the right to be the only person who is allowed to play it. But see if anyone else cares! Although to be fair, people have always asked if I mind them playing my tunes. Whether they actually do play them of course is another matter!

DtG - Most venues will have a licence (PRS?) So that performance there of copyright works is legal (I believe).

Perhaps as has been said, copyright is a "red herring". But it is a difficult matter for those of us who write tunes or songs that we would love others to play or sing, rather than just to buy. Because always at the back of the mind (and often in the advice of family and friends) is the thought that if it becomes really popular, someone else will make a vast profit, and we will lose out.

Ultimately, of course, the great public (or a subset thereof) will decide whether the music lives on and becomes a contender for being called "folk" music.. Probably not in our lifetime though.