If someone offered to sell you a plasma TV for $100, would you take it? If you don't ask any questions, like where it came from, you could get yourself a good deal. Your greed helps you overcome your conscience, and soon you forget all about who got hurt so you could benefit. But what if you get caught?

We live in a strange world of entitlement where some people think it's okay to appropriate other people's belongings and use them, especially in the name of corporate earnings. Recently, events came to light that a number of agents listings were being used inappropriately by third-party referral companies and their confederates. In other words, great big publicly-held companies that should have known better used another company's listings to deliver leads to a referral partner. While that's not illegal, how they got the listings is questionable at best.

To begin with some perspective, there are only three ways to get listings:

• MLSs
• Brokers
• Third-party aggregators who have permission to broadcast listings from MLSs and/or brokers. An example would be Homestore's Realtor.com which has permission to broadcast listings on AOL, to bring traffic to brokers. Real Estate Book contracts to provide listings to increase exposure for its advertisers - not to generate leads for other agents.

There's also a fourth way to get listings - third-party aggregators who do not have permission.

According to Real Estate Book CEO Dan McCarthy, Realestate.com did not have permission to use Real Estate Book's listings. He says that Realestate.com contracted with a company called One Roof Technologies to receive a data feed of listings that included, but may not have been limited to, Real Estate Book's listings, without obtaining permission. By the time the listings were published on Realestate.com, the go-between for referral broker Lending Tree and MSN House & Home, many listing agents' names had been removed, and HPC Interactive's (Primedia's Internet division which powers Realesate.com) copyright was placed on Real Estate Book's listings. The listings were then used by Lending Tree to flip leads to Lending Tree's member brokers.

Responds Robert Turnbull, spokesperson for Realestate.com, "RealEstate.com has not and does not practice the method of screen scraping data from any Web site."

How did HPC Interactive know to seek out OneRoofTechnologies to supply Realestate.com with listings?

"To be accurate, 1RoofTechnologies approached RealEstate.com," replies Turnbull. "Please keep in mind that Primedia is a world-class media company that clearly intends to do much more with Realestate.com than to merely create another real estate portal. Leveraging the strengths of offline businesses to become effective online businesses as well is one of the things we have done very successfully in other real estate categories. The resale residential real estate industry is no exception to this and we intend to assist the industry in leveraging all sources of media in their effort to best serve consumers as well as industry members. The extent and detail of that effort will be discussed at a later date.

But Primedia is a major publisher - is there any reason why its subsidiaries - HPC Interactive and Realestate.com would not be familiar with the copyright laws regarding listing data protection? Did HPC Interactive realize that other agents had paid to advertise those listings, and that your publication of the listings to deliver referral leads to Lending Tree is a copyright violation? Were you aware that Real Estate Book did not authorize OneRoofTechnologies to give you their feed?

"Realestate.com has been in discussions with the Real Estate Book for several weeks," says Turnbull. "Our company is currently reviewing an agreement with the Real Estate Book and feel confident our companies will be jointly disclosing a mutually beneficial agreement in the coming weeks. In addition, Realestate.com maintains the highest respect for proprietary ownerships of listings and is working to ensure all listings data is compiled, displayed and used in accordance with the owners of the data."

In short, Real Estate Book has Realestate.com and its referral partner Lending Tree over a barrel. In other words, Real Estate Book can either stick it to them in court or through a very expensive distribution agreement, which is much more likely. First - where else are they going to get listings? Second, Real Estate Book has a very good case that Realestate.com either knew it was receiving unauthorized listings or one its subsidiaries knew and didn't tell the others. Either answer makes leadership look suspect. How does Real Estate Book know this?

Primedia, owner of Realestate.com also owns OneRoofTechnologies - the very company Turnbull says "approached Realestate.com."

This isn't just some company that led Realestate.com astray. OneRoofTechnologies is a part of Primedia, its domain name is registered to ApartmentGuide.com, and ApartmentGuide.com is a subsidiary of Primedia. There's no pretending this is some rogue outsider - One Roof was purchased by Primedia on February 1, 2002, Turnbull told Realty Times.

Repeated questions to Realestate.com about where they get their listings failed to generate even the most remote acknowledgement of The Real Estate Book. With an in-house employee supplying the listings, how could they not know? And if the listings were obtained legally, why all the secrecy? What reason is there to hide where the listings originated?

Realestate.com is not the only party here who should be shame-faced.

Realestate.com acted as a go-between for Lending Tree and MSN House & Home, and they are just as guilty of receiving unauthorized listings. They both looked the other way and failed to ask the right questions - or worse, they asked and failed to get satisfactory answers.

It's a simple question - where do the listings come from? Keeping a business model secret is no reason not to disclose where the listings originate - if you are depending on a referral model to work. If you are in the publishing business and you know you are using material under copyright, you know the right thing to do is to ask to see the signed permission by the copyright holder to redistribute the content. If Lending Tree and MSN knew the listings were from The Real Estate Book, why did they not question why Real Estate Book's listings were appearing under a HPC Interactive copyright? That should have been their first clue that something was wrong.

The moral of the story is - ask the right questions first, before greed gets you into trouble, and the police (industry watchers, copyright attorneys, etc.) find their way to your door.