We’ll level with you: industry disputes over the US Consent Decrees – the near 80-year-old set of laws that prescribe how ASCAP and BMI must run their organizations – don’t always make for the most thrilling stories.

But today, we are thankful for them. Because MBW has been digging around in the legal mountain of filings connected to the Department of Justice’s latest review of the Consent Decrees, and discovered something worthy of the attention, and debating faculties, of the worldwide songwriting and publishing community.