backlinks and affiliates

Lately there are two industries we will be going after with very large sites and only 1 main competitor in each to deal with.

I've noticed these sites are using affiliates for coupon related sites to funnel people into there site. The thing is im seeing huge backlink updates for these pages for the affiliate id pages that they link too. Is there anyone else out there who sees this being a un ethical tactic?

It would seem fairly unable to be controlled if you were a regular user not doing SEO and got into an affiliate marketing program these results would be fairly achieved depending on the size of the campaign..

What are others thoughts on these as far as driving backlinks and increasing PR based on link popularity alone.

I've never ran an affiliate marketing program like CJ on a site, but some of these sites are very duplicated in content and exactly in layout by the thousands. My education level is growing as a i read more about it but first hand expierences would be great right now too.

Just curious how other industries are doing with these affilliate programs alot of big sites are using and effects on PR.

- Others seeing it?
- Others doing it?
- Those who hate it and will probably post with some sort of flame.

You might want to read this:

http://forums.seochat.com/t6770/s.html