I think it’s only a matter of time before some releases a tool that identifies these paid link networks using the pattern matching techniques you describe.

I’m currently wondering whether to release mine, although I don’t want to encourage people to grass up on paid links.

SEO should be more about providing the right content to customers (whilst being accessible) rather than trying to game search engines in an ongong war.

That’s not realistic in any competitive market, good content can only get you so far. Links are essential to any SEO campaign, buying links is just a by-product of competitive marketing and should not be condemned as anything other than Marketing 101. Finding ways to get the most out of an advertising platform and using cutting edge techniques to get ahead of competitors happens offline as well as online.

…blogs and websites are only really sopposed to link out if they think something is cool.

The dmoz directory was started in order to link out to cool sites so that you can find new information and not have to remember URLs. Yahoo actually featured cool sites (with a sunglasses icon) within their directory portal. I think that the lines here are too blurred to differentiate them.

SEO should be more about providing the right content to customers (whilst being accessible) rather than trying to game search engines in an ongong war.