Virtue may be rewarded, but not in the current internet market. Heavy.com, a New York entertainment website, has inflated its audience numbers by securing traffic from disreputable agencies. Execs, as open as they are cynical, describe the venture as an arbitrage play, buying junk web traffic and selling those users expensively to advertising agencies. Its newest project, MyHeavy, slaps ads on video clips pilfered from other sites. No matter. The company has just raised another $20m from Polaris Ventures and other investors. (Disclosure: I know and like the Heavy.com founders, respect their salesmanship, but have never met anyone who knowingly visits the site.)

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