Quite interesting to see so many commenters claiming this is "cookie stuffing", this isn't cookie stuffing. Essentially non-affiliate links are being turned into affiliate links and quite a few people do this.
A couple weeks ago on Shark Tank Australia there was some lady trying to get funding for her website "Rich Gurl" (http://richgurl.com/) essentially what she does is goes out and scrapes sales from all of the major retailers, then when someone clicks a product and heads to that website a cookie is saved on your machine for a few weeks. Any purchased you might make in that window is counted as an affiliate sale and it is NOT illegal. This is essentially what Bit.ly are doing with their shortened links.
What Bit.ly are doing here is not illegal, it might be a bit deceptive but not illegal. The best course of action here would be for users of Bit.ly to stop using it and perhaps find an alternative. Eventually if enough people leave then Bit.ly might get the hint and stop what they are doing.
It's cookie stuffing because the visitor was already going to amazon before bitly appended their affiliate link. This is different than when an affiliate promotes a specific product and convinces the visitor to click a link with an affiliate code. Bitly did not convince anyone to buy a product.
It may not be cookie stuffing by strict definition, but it's definitely affiliate fraud and I cannot see how any advertiser would be happy to pay bitly for adding zero value.
don't get how she can make money just by scraping. I mean anyone can scrape. The problem would be generating traffic so enough people could click on the ads.
I'm confused as to what she was doing differently, amazon even offers product ad widgets to put on your page.
A couple weeks ago on Shark Tank Australia there was some lady trying to get funding for her website "Rich Gurl" (http://richgurl.com/) essentially what she does is goes out and scrapes sales from all of the major retailers, then when someone clicks a product and heads to that website a cookie is saved on your machine for a few weeks. Any purchased you might make in that window is counted as an affiliate sale and it is NOT illegal. This is essentially what Bit.ly are doing with their shortened links.
What Bit.ly are doing here is not illegal, it might be a bit deceptive but not illegal. The best course of action here would be for users of Bit.ly to stop using it and perhaps find an alternative. Eventually if enough people leave then Bit.ly might get the hint and stop what they are doing.