The short answers are:

What these "online discount brokerage firms" really want is to get a hall pass to skip over the dues-paying and go right to profitability. Who wouldn't? But lawsuits and tattling to the DOJ isn't the way to get there.

While some public sympathy may be generated by well-meaning reporters who smell a future story, (won't it be fun to watch the NAR take a tumble) it's doubtful that they would be so sympathetic if the same kinds of challenges were happening in their industry.

Imagine a publisher called Startup that has developed a business model based on publishing the news, only it doesn't have any writers or any stories. The fastest way to have a product, decides Startup, is to use the WSJ's stories.

Fortunately for the WSJ, there are copyright laws that prevent Startup from doing that. Further, WSJ isn't under any obligation to syndicate, link to, or otherwise benefit Startup if it doesn't want to. Why? Because WSJ incurred the time, trouble, expense and risk to obtain the stories.

Now what if the WSJ were a member of a cooperative that shares information? Members agree to share their information as long as other members don't use the information to gain a competitive advantage. Startup becomes a member of that cooperative and demands that the WSJ be forced to share its stories. When WSJ refuses, Startup calls the DOJ.

Absurd? Not any more absurd than what is happening in the real estate industry. The only difference is that the WSJ has federal copyright laws protecting its inventory, and the real estate industry doesn't. All they have is a voluntary gentleman's agreement that shared inventory won't be used to harm individual members. The MLS is a kind of cigar room for b-to-b communication. But if a member wants to use that inventory to get customers that means it wants to pull customers away from the others, and if they tell consumers that they charge less than their competitors, then they are attempting to gain a competitive edge. Somehow in this upside-down world, brokers who want to protect their investments are made the villains.

Why should the standard be different for the real estate industry? Brokers obtain listings at great time, effort, expense and risk, yet here is the DOJ investigating whether or not they should be forced to share their "copyright" with a competitor.

What's lost is that the brokers are already cooperating by sharing the listing in the MLS, something no law in any state demands that any broker must do. Now they are getting investigated because they want to share the listing but don't want it featured as part of a discount brokerage ad? That's not only understandable, it should be respected.

But milking the cow through the fence isn't good enough for some people, not when you can get the DOJ to hand over the cow.