"Only because we don't know who wrote them. They didn't write themselves. A really stupid statement."
Nothing stupid about it
It's not their anonymity that makes them folk songs but what happened to them
The songs were taken up and passed on and changed by whoever took them up in the process - that's what defines them as folk songs
Some of them almost certainly were made communally - we have a number of examples of recently composed (40-60 year old) being made by groups of people passing lines and verses between each other until they finished up with full songs
In each case, the names of the people who were involved were not known, the communities took them up and they became part of Traveller/Clare culture
The law deems such songs to be public public property - you think that stupid, take it up with the law
Walter was spot on (as he usually was) when he said "They're everybody's"
      
In my opinion, all folk songs are 'arrangements' so it is sharp practice for any modern artist to copyright their arrangement, because they are doing so on the backs of the legal owners "Everybody"
If there is any money to be made out of selling such songs it should be ploughed back into the preservation of folk song
Singers are entitled to earn money from singing folk songs (being paid for their labour) if that's what they choose to do, but that's it - end of story
Jim Carroll