This sort of clickfraud is like using someone elses bottle opener to open the bottle vs buying your own bottle opener.
Clicking on adverts, you're using advertisers money to reward the website, instead of using your own.
Clearly it's not a good thing to advocate, but you can sort of see why some people may decide to do it.
A better suggestion IMHO would be for websites to use pay per lead/sale affiliate links, and just ask that if people were already going to buy something, that they use the websites links, thus giving the website a commission. That way no one is defrauded.
I had an idea for a browser extension that would rewrite all "sponsorable" links, whether they already were from a certain affiliate or not, to be from yours. You'd register at the extension's site and it would then automatically register you at all the sponsorable sites they supported. Best of all, the extension wouldn't be fixed to any individual donatee; rather, users would be able to click buttons on sites that read "sponsor me/us from now on", and switch the extension's target. There could also be a menu to select from previously used sponsors, obviously.
A more general idea for blogs/forums...
When anyone points to a product that is recognized as having an affiliate program, modify the link to capture the commission and give it to the blog/forum owner.
Could quite easily be done just as a small javascript include and could work pretty well provided they get enough people posting links to products/websites with affiliate programs.
The last part of my idea, I figured, was essential to its success--if it wasn't the consumer's choice that caused already-affiliated links to be repurposed, it might break those "common carrier" rules that allow a lot of more questionable forums to exist (would an ISP be allowed to embedd an ad-blocker in their traffic proxies without then doing "decency filtering" censorship?). Additionally, users might not like the idea of their own links being hijacked in this way, filtering the scripts out with adblockers ;)
This is called "link hijacking" or another variant is "cookie stuffing". Generally looked at as unethical and dishonest. Though it is done quite frequently and very successfully by some people out there.
No analogy fits perfectly. I hope TipJoy catches on in a big way everywhere. Voting the link up on social link sites is another good way to support what you like.
This sort of clickfraud is like using someone elses bottle opener to open the bottle vs buying your own bottle opener.
Clicking on adverts, you're using advertisers money to reward the website, instead of using your own.
Clearly it's not a good thing to advocate, but you can sort of see why some people may decide to do it.
A better suggestion IMHO would be for websites to use pay per lead/sale affiliate links, and just ask that if people were already going to buy something, that they use the websites links, thus giving the website a commission. That way no one is defrauded.