I agree with the points in general, particularly David's comment at the end of the article, "if we would spend more time making our sites the very best they can be, we might not have to worry about what the competition is doing" - never a truer word spoken!

But business is business and if you can leverage an advantage against a competitor within the realms of the law and personal / society's ethics, then why not take it? 

Sphinn has a "report as spam" button that people regularly use, yet no one has any issues with that (the people you are reporting are just trying to market their own interests as is a lot of the rest of the community - they just choose to do it in a different way).  Is that different because our profressions aren't so reliant on Sphinn for success (and we aren't hit by "Sphinn updates" and "loss of Sphinn traffic" issues)?  No bitterness towards Sphinn like some SEOs have for Google?

I'm still in the same camp as David - make good sites and don't worry so much about the competition.  But if the opportunity arises to take market share from the competiton then I think anyone working in marketing would be doing themselves a disservice not to take it.

Scott