[itsprofitbaron]

  How is that not fair?

"My personal belief is that, devaluing the site for the BRAND term e.g. [rap genius] actually devalues Google's quality. On the other side of the coin, if someone searches for [X rap genius] whilst they are under penalty its fair that they do not rank for that either. However, there are obvious reasons as to why the search quality team have decided to do this."

  If anything, I think google is too soft on people attempting to cheat them. 

Google's Search Quality Team are actually pretty strict in terms of reviewing the reconsideration request and if the site has previously had a penalty they pay extra attention to the cleanup.