hey fred,
Yes good article, this has been going on for a while, afterall its how Statscounter.com got its pr10.
But people setting stat counters and having the links go to other sites has also been around for some time. About a year ago i noticed some Slots related sites getting their links like this and they ranked very well too. I cant remember the domain names as i dont have much to do with slots or casinos that much.
I also considered buying a site back then, it was advertised in sitepoint and was getting around 30 statcounter sign ups a day and they used to sell the link that would be in the counter code (i would have used it for my own sites).
But i decided not to buy it as i knew that would be too spammy and in time when google realises this and manually ban/penalises the site thats being linked to from the counters.
Backhat / grey areas are ok for the short term, but if you want a big, established and well ranked site for many years, its not a good idea as sooner or later you will get slapped by big G.