Linking to this website without written permission is strictly prohibited. Really hope meesterdude obtained said required written permission prior posting.
There have been lawsuits about it! See, for example, https://www.seroundtable.com/linkage-lawsuit-15131.html (the first useful hit in a Google search for "lawsuit about linking"), and a survey article https://btlj.org/data/articles2015/vol16/16_3/16-berkeley-te... by Mark Sableman.
Despite me pointing out the ridiculousness of the situation, as well as the SEO benefit to the original site no one would listen and it ended as "remove the links in the next 48 hours or we take down your sites until you do."
Wasn't worth the fight, so I removed them. Still can't get over the waste of resources and the ridiculousness of the whole thing.