Since it offers the reader a new economic perspective on the value of links and presents several terms that may eventually find their way into the lexicon of daily discourse in IT, this paper is quite intriguing. The theme is that “search engines like Google interpret links to a Web page as objective, peer-endorsed, and machine readable signs of value,” and “that they also have power, affecting accessibility and knowledge on the Web,” and can be seen as a “pseudomonetary unit” (p. 72).

Evidence of this monetary value is Google’s page rank system, which appears to bestow a percentage value of the original page to linked pages--a procedure called page drain (p. 73). Apparently it is possible to interfere with this value chain by utilizing link farms, and taking serious steps to gain advantage from the Google system, thereby optimizing preferred sites and reducing the page rank of anchor sites.

But there can be serious consequences of unauthorized buying of links to one’s own site. As the author states: there is “a common law perception of link prostitution, link slutting, shamelessly selling one’s integrity for links” (p. 73). Link slutting is not illegal yet, but the owners of search engines crack down on the practice by zeroing out the offender’s page rank value.

This paper condenses a fascinating new topic in the complex world of information and communication technologies (ICT). Inevitably, there will be serious action on this front by standards groups and possibly even national legislatures.