i agree that mahalo is not doing anything illegal, the simple point is their actions are unethical.<p>scraping content is allowed under fair use, but going the extra step of nofollowing is an intentional attempt to use someone else's content without passing pagerank.<p>it is a deliberate attempt to outrank the sources.  this is pretty much akin to a mid-level manager taking credit for the work performed by one of the people that reports to him.  illegal? no.  lame and worthy of being called out for? yes.<p>i also agree with you that the real onus is on google to not rank sites that engage in this tactic.