internetheaven - 11:19 pm on Dec 2, 2010 (gmt 0)

Were these naturally occurring links to begin with? Or, were they solicited?

Natural ... but don't see how that is relevant?

My problem is that Google comes up with these sweeping policing moves with hefty penalities and they can generally only do more harm than good.

ESPECIALLY with natural link building. If natural links are no longer registered by Google because natural linkers tend to be cautious and use the threatening nofollow attribute, then only spam and SEO generated links will count.