But it's a record with a huge asterisk, like Major League Baseball records of players using steroids. If buying your own album in order to get it into the charts is legitimate, I'm a millionaire because I pay myself thousands of dollars per minute.

(some of those dollars may be the same ones over and over again)

Yeah, another way to game the system is to include your album with concert ticket sales. That counts as a sale officially, but you probably aren't losing many "real" sales since your fans probably have the album already.

Well, according to the news, Apple paid $100 million for the rights of "giving away" those copies.

You are, of course, paying income tax on your salary? :)