Folk-punk and the tradition of passing songs between artists is something that distinguishes the community from most other music scenes.

In folk music generally, songs exist as community property in a way that they don't in rock or pop. A song that one person writes and another person performs is not a cover version in the same way — it's a song being carried through the tradition. Folk-punk has inherited this tradition, and it shows in how artists treat each other's material.

I've heard folk-punk artists play songs that I knew from other artists without announcing them as covers. The song is just a song; whoever sang it last time was one node in the song's passage through the community. This creates a specific relationship to creative ownership that is fundamentally different from the intellectual property model of mainstream music.

It also creates a specific quality of listening at folk-punk shows. When you hear a song you've heard before from a different voice and a different performance, you hear the song differently — not the performance, but the song itself.