“Free iPods” have strings attached

I will link to the original New York Times article with the caveat that it will ever so shortly fall behind the NYT costwall. The two second summary of the article goes a little something like this: freeipods.com will send you a free iPod, but only if you can successfully play the sleazy marketing agent to a handful of your friends.

You get the iPod, but Gratis Internet (the company who runs freeipods.com) gets so much more: $5 million worth of revenue last year, and an expected $15 million this year. Think of it as the internet's newest version of the old pyramid scheme.

Has anyone done this? Did you get the free iPod, and was it worth your labor playing marketing recruiter to your friends?