why is nobody talking about the fact that google adsense runs the exact same scam ads? they even run on techcrunch, twitpic, mashable and many other "reputable" websites.
One of the main Videolan project devs told me recently that their update tool stats show that 15% of all VLC builds downloaded are from scam sites--sites that charge money for VLC or include spyware in the installation, and promote themselves using Google Ads. Google refuses to stop serving ads on the keyword and it's impossible to go after the sites legally (they're all based in Russia or whatnot, whack-a-mole and all that).
Now consider the fact that there were 80 million VLC downloads in the period after the 1.0 release. And OpenOffice apparently has the problem even worse.
It's really quite sickening the way that AdSense profits off these sorts of scams.
See, for example, here:
http://www.seobook.com/danny-sullivan-highlights-googles-2-t...
http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/static.py?page=guid...
I'm going to assume that Scamville offers would fall under one of those categories. Hard to say without actual legal precedent.
Google was quick to point out their policies to the FTC on the scammy government grant ads, and yet months later Google was running the very same scam ads http://www.seobook.com/buying-links-vs-buying-rankings
some more background on Google's ads http://www.benedelman.org/ppc-scams/ http://www.seobook.com/how-make-easy-money-google
There's thousands of warnings about spam scams and phishers, everyone who read techcrunch or similar sites likely knew they were scams on the first email they ever received of the nature.