Paid / Sponsored links receive PageRank punishment

Just like when high-profile people tend to get harsher penalties for crimes, so as to get the message across, so have some high-profile websites been punished for (seemingly) offering paid sponsored linking. I'm sure Google has no problem with a single site sponsoring another, but it is looking like SearchEngineGuide should've known better!

http://www.searchengineguide.com/ - was PR7, now PR4 - and just look at all the paid links at the bottom of their home page...

Sites link Engadget and Problogger have also suffered major PR drops, possibly related to not using the nofollow tag for affiliate links and links to sites in their network.

Other sites have suffered due to having a product (ie StatCounter) that includes a link back to their site. Or receiving hundreds of links (ie newspaper sites) from a site like Digg. This is a major step forward for Google and their PageRank invention.

PREDICTION: The first 3 sites mentioned above sites (more listed here) will change the offending links to have the "nofollow" tag and will then get their old PR restored - and webmasters throughout the universe will start abiding by Google's rules, whether they were in similar jeopardy or not