Janet
I must say a well thought through post, and also unfortunately a typical Blackhat approach to abuse the fact that the young industry with it’s very limited legal protection can do very little to protect themselves from people with a different morality than ours. Having read many of your SEO posts in the past and knowing how brilliant you are, I can’t help but to respect you for your SEO genius and abilities. However, what you are trying to accomplish is two folded.
You want webmasters to understand what you are doing is not wrong and what 888 is condoning is not wrong. In your ideal world this might be true, however on these forums it must be made clear that we do not support these actions because no matter how you spin the wheel what you are doing is wrong even though legally there might not be recourse, IMO it is still wrong.
You state nothing can be done to combat sites which steal content and use in the form of scraper sites, but I disagree completely. Pressure can be applied on the programs turning a blind eye to their affiliate partners who actively participate in this unethical and illegal activity. Indeed to sit back and take no action whatsoever, allows the industry to become more tarnished.
Causing the wild west to revive on the internet is not good from the user’s point of view. That, at the end of the day is my approach to good ethics. The internet belongs to the user, does your site provide the user with good quality unique content that are a valuable contribution to the quality the internet provides or are you the gangster who bomb people with crap just to get the clicks for your selfish financial gains.
As far as the DDOS attacks are concerned, I have no opinion. It has always to me been an act of your typical hacker, something I also did when I was in my teens. If it was you behind it, I doubt it as I have way to much respect for you to believe that you would be guilty of such a childish act.