All link building is black hat. It is a purposeful manipulation of the search engine algorithm.
Way overstated. There is no white, only black and grey.
Setting up Google Places is an effort to "manipulate" the search engine. If doing a single directory submit or sign-up is "white", then what about doing 1000? 10,000? If one would like to introduce the idea of "good" manipulation vs. "bad" manipulation, where does the line get drawn between the two. And, more importantly, who gets to draw the line? Google? Microsoft? Haliburton? The Federal Government? The United Nations?
Jesus?
Is doing submits & signups "by hand" white hat, but using software to do it for you "black hat"? Or is it only black hat if you pay someone to do it for you?
Backlinks? If you ask someone to put in a backlink for you, there's an attempt at manipulation right there. Is one white but 10,000 black?
Right now, I'm doing a backlink analysis of a national franchise's website in San Fransisco. They have over 7000 backlinks, and I would say less than 5% are organic. All of the others have obviously been paid for. My customer is a very small business in the same industry. She has 3 backlinks.
How many backlinks can I pay for, before her site crosses the line into black hat "manipulation"? Does Warner Bros. really lose any money if I upload 60 seconds of their intellectual property to YouTube?
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
Anatole France - Wikiquote
One of the reasons why so many people have so much trouble with all of these issues is because they allow the major corporations to frame them. Google decides the parameters and at "street level" they make no sense. But they make sense to Google because it makes them money.
A parallel to this is the idea of intellectual property. Filesharing Lady Gaga's video is bad, but Microsoft stealing other people's intelletual property is not? The entire system is founded on corruption, and how that the most corrupt have ascended to a position of power and dominence, suddenly there is a "moral code" that all of us smaller entities are expected to adhere to.
This is why I am black hat. There is no white, and there is no spoon.
There Is No Spoon - The Matrix (5/9) Movie CLIP (1999) HD - YouTube