Well, that's very interesting. Although this article is merely a pro-journalism example of the very same "consider the case of sites X and Y, where X and Y are cannot be named" phenomenon, so it still isn't clear to me how large the risk is.
And I'm with justindz, who doesn't understand the proposed defense. If a competitor decides to cross the ethical line and take your site down by "generously" having spambots put up links to your site, thereby causing Google to conclude that you're a spammer and shut down your pagerank... can't they do this to all of your sites at once, not just one? My understanding -- correct me if I'm wrong -- is that the cost or supply of spambots is not the limiting factor here.
And I'm with justindz, who doesn't understand the proposed defense. If a competitor decides to cross the ethical line and take your site down by "generously" having spambots put up links to your site, thereby causing Google to conclude that you're a spammer and shut down your pagerank... can't they do this to all of your sites at once, not just one? My understanding -- correct me if I'm wrong -- is that the cost or supply of spambots is not the limiting factor here.