The NYTimes had an article about this a few days ago and I ment to post about it. To me this is just a sign of how low some companies will go to make a buck on the net:

New Kazaa stealing referral links:. "The newest version of Kazaa contains code which will rewrite URLs to sites like Amazon.com which allows affiliates to earn commission from sales they refer to Amazon. If you were to have this software installed and click through one of Lockergnome's book links to Amazon, Kazaa would end up getting credit for any sales that may have resulted from your visit to the site. [evhead]

I also dug up the story over at the NYTimes about this. It also includes some information on how to remove some kinds of this software. My favorite bit from the article is:

Mr. Petersen also pointed to a statement made in an online forum where the technology was discussed, in which a LimeWire developer characterized accusations that the software diverts money as "pretty accurate," but said, "While I agree that this is really a bit of a scam, it is a way for us to pay salaries while not adversely affecting our users."

That's right, needing to be paid makes everything okay. It doesn't matter who you're screwing over. It's stealing, plain and simple.

Thankfully, nothing like this has shown up for OS X yet (and let's hope it never does). And also thankfully, the software I use doesn't have anything like this.