Originally Posted by signupdamnit

Actually PR is probably doing better than you think. They are selling the traffic, getting nearly free branding, and receiving an seo benefit from many hardlinks across thousands of other domains they don't own.

The question is whether or not it's worth it to the domain owner and whether or not it helps screw everyone else further by saturating the search engines with a bunch of hosted tubes where the domain owners are making fifty cents a day for being on the first page of the results. Some are doing better than others.