Yes, but those link-farms get de-ranked by Google (which is a good thing IMO). Google is pretending that their particular case of linking is legitimate and deserves fair-use protection.
I don't think Google is pretending. Its linking is legitimate. Also, it feels strange to draw an equivalence between Google downranking a spam website and the government charging to link to things.
There is no difference between content/link farms and what Google is doing - its copy/pasting someone else's words on a website and surrounding them with ads.