But you could be friendly and agree to remove the links in questions since they seem to believe it will harm their business. Not doing so "out of principal" may effect others as Google believes your links are low quality.(although it sounds like their SEO company is mostly to blame for their problems).
In the bad old days of the Internet, web sites would complain if you linked to them, because they though they had some sort of a right to determine who linked to them. After court cases, etc. the issue was resolved. And now this.
If Google really thinks that a link is illegitimate, then it should just ignore it in its algorithm.
Please don't reply to this if you don't fully agree with my points.
And "Why" one should not behave as an ass is self evident in my mind. But we may not agree on this as evidenced by your last sentence.
In those instances, even if you think you are being a good guy, there's a good chance you are wasting the one resource you can never recover (time) in an attempt to help someone who is likely going to attempt harming you AND waste your time.
That was the point of my last sentence: even though I asked that replies be in agreement, you still chose to reply. It's the same as someone asking "please don't link to me", but everyone is still free to link. That's the way discourse works, and that's how linking should work too.
Ok, I take your very well made point.
I agreed up until this, but I think it's meant as irony?