WordPress Plugin Ethics

I was looking at some of the recently released plugins, particularly this stock data one and also something for media content - which adds a noembed section to any embedded content that does not already have one - very handy for people reading a site in an RSS reader.

It was the <noembed> tag which was the clue.

Stat Counter has a front page PR9 - all done by backlinks from the sites that display their code - but the interesting thing is that even the invisible counter has a link, tucked away in <noscript> tags. And for the search engines, this works just as well.

Unlike theme authors, plugin authors don’t necessarily get a link from people using their code - I was just wondering about the ethics of using <noscript> in the output… what do you think?

Also… how much is a text link ad on a PR 9…???