Spam reporting your SEO competition an ethical decision?

In a recent post by Rand Fish of SEOmoz about 5 common pieces of SEO advice he disagrees with, I was surprised to see him reluctantly defending the process of reporting sites to Google that had seemingly bought links (or similar). Surprised not because I am against the practice of reporting those who contravene Google's terms of service but because it was the first I had ever heard about this industry code of silence on the subject. Perhaps this is the point where I should "fess up"?

My name is tootricky and I happily report competitor spam/link buying to Google.

Search Engine Knight or Spawn of Search Satan?

Is "doing the dirty" on a SEO competitor an act of noble morality or is it industrial sabotage? Are we who perform this seemingly unpopular practice, Knights of Search Engine ethics or kin of the google-devil?

I see myself as neither actually but let me explain why.

The two reasons given in Rand's article for not reporting bought links and spam are:

You may inadvertently hurt your site's rankings if you've engaged in (or unknowingly benefited from) particular types of spam.

Reporting spam may hurt your fellow SEOs and is thus unethical

There are two fundamental ripostes one can make to these very valid points:

1. Most SEO is some form of managed risk, therefore, if I am happy to stand by my work I expect others to be reasonable and do the same.
   
2. One can no more seriously apply ethics or morality to practices that are against the Google TOS than one can apply it to strawberry trifle.

Moralising managed risk is illogical

Link buyers and spammers, perform both practices because they are generally:

• Effective
• Cost Efficient
• Offer a measurable ROI

Therefore managing the risk of these types of marketing strategies is the main draw back not the fact that someone somewhere will think their work to be "ethical" or not. The risk to them is that their bought links may possibly be reported by a competitor or spotted by Google and may possibly be acted on (to their detriment).

Their decision to increase their liability is no more an ethical choice as mine is an unethical practice to report them.

So report them I will :)