Someone on this thread asked to hear from Lisa Null about the Green Linnet Affair so I'm posting what I sent yesterday to publore. I'm not sure I can shed much light on the specifics of this current complaint, but I can provide some background context. Maybe it will help:

As an original cofounder of Green Linnet with Pat Sky, back in 1971, it
is with some anxiety that I have been following the recent discussion
about that company. I subsidized Green Linnet as long as I could and
eventually passed it on gratis to our employee, Wendy Newton, with the
hope that she would continue developing it into a financially and
ethically sounddpurveyer of traditional and roots-based music. Wendy
loved the emerging Celtic hybrid sound which seemed to have more
commercial potential than the minimally accompanied vocal materials and
simply-recorded tunes which had originally impelled Pat Sky and myself
into the record business. We took pride in our original roster of
musicians, which included Seamus Ennis, Peter Bellamy, Joe Heaney, Paddy
Tunney, Rosalie Sorrels, and Debby McClatchy with the Red Clay Ramblers.
Still, it was post-Bothy Band jigs and reels which quickened Wendy's
heart.

I developed confidence in Wendy early on-- she handled my personal
bills, bank account, and household while I toured as a singer. The
emerging portrait of Wendy as an avaricious and exploitive manipulator
of musical talent has made little sense to me in light of this earlier
experience. I have suggested to Wendy that she respond to such charges,
but she hesitates to do so. She feels such negative stereotypes are
emerging from legal issues best worked out through mediation or in a
court of law rather than in the court of public opinion.

We do not talk about business much because our roles resemble that of
natural versus adoptive parent. I do know, however, that much of Green
Linnet's staff has remained with the company over the years and that,
without yielding durable profits, the company has been able to provide
medical insurance and a living wage to a small, stable work force. Wendy
acknowledges that she owes some musicians back royalties but tells me
she is paying them off. She believes that her books and contracts are in
order and open to inspection.

Whatever the sense of wrong the plaintiffs (reduced from 5 to 3) feel
and whatever specifics gave rise to this press release, the story is
surely more complex, not easily abstracted into a cause celebre on
behalf of put-upon folk primitives. That tale has been told again and
again, and folklorists have not always been militant enough in
protecting those victimized by the system. The essence of the Green
Linnet story, though, is likely to lie in the struggles between
musicians and a small business all trying to rise up out of a backporch
economy and to gain for themselves a semblence of economic legitimacy.