Robertson added, "in fact, VU deployed the technology and people from MP3.com throughout their media empire. VU now uses a customer tracking system across its media properties to manage email campaigns and profile music listeners in a scientific way. They took the digital publishing engine MP3.com perfected, and now have the most advanced digital publishing architecture in the world. Music goes from the recording studio directly into a digital library, where it can be sent to the CD pressing plant, music subscription systems, publishing libraries, and much more -- all digitally and precisely tracked. VU also took the my.mp3 subscription system and used it as the foundation of the Pressplay, which became the recently launched Napster 2.0 music subscription system."

As it now stands, VU has an extremely state-of-the-art digital music publishing machine that it may use however it desires. The real issue, however, isn't the technology but, rather, the content that MP3.com developed over its few years in business.

The issue now is who owns the artistic works in the archive? Who can give permission to sell or archive it? Does the current owner need to get every artist's permission first? Do the people who say they own the material actually have the right to say so (is it really theirs?) These and many other ethics and legal questions would need to be seriously addressed in order to save the millions of songs currently on the disk drive arrays of MP3.com. This potato may just be too hot to handle. The destruction of all the content may be the only solution to avoid a lengthy legal battle (or many battles.)

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