Internet Crusade (the company which conducts the e-PRO Course for NAR) had an announcement on their Real Town website that the recent final judgment from DOJ about the investigation and suit against NAR was a WIN for NAR and regular brokers and MLS systems.  BUT - There was an article in the 5/28/08 edition of USA Today with a headline that touted "Online real estate agents get equality".  This article said the ruling was a win for the online discount broker (those operating a VOW or Virtual Office) and implied that what NAR was doing was somehow suspect and anti-competitive.  How could these both be correct?  Spin, of course. USA Today and other media have been against NAR in recent coverage of MLS ownership of data and broker's ownership of listings.   DOJ has been in the same mindset and spent 3 years and millions of tax-payers dollars to "prove" it.  The facts seem to indicate that both the media and DOJ were incorrect and there is now a face-saving DOJ final judgment on that.  IC put out a video of their two principal founders on their website going over the final judgment line by line to show why their position was the correct interpretation of the judgment.  Problem is that it lasts several hours.  Now they have a 6 minute summary of the conversation.  It can be found at RealTown - Real Estate Social Network, Real Estate Articles, Real Estate Blogs.  The full set of videos can be seen at their website and a copy of the Final Judgment is also available on their website.  The point is who owns the data and who can control its use.  VOWs often got access to data only to sell it back to REALTORS^®  as a "lead".  Evidently REALTOR.com was doing that for a while as well. 

Seems that if the IC interpretation is correct, NAR did a good job and REALTORS^® in general pretty much had MLS and data sharing right from the outset.  IC feels that VOWs will kind of go away as a business model or at least significantly change as a result of the ruling rather than be strengthened by it.