[crazy canuck]

players, due to their subjective definitions of ethics, morals, and fairness, will continue to use whatever means necessary to gain an edge over their competition

I couldn't agree with this statement more. There is no point of arguing. Many people are defending softwares becasue it gives them an edge. Morals and ethics are not clearly defined and LOGIC can't be used to evaluate the situation. Some people think gay marriage is a right, and some think the sodomites should burn in hell.

But I'd like to point out using the logic that people are using to defend various software I could argue that using colluding bots is not unethical. While colluding bots are against T&As, they are definitely not illegal and T&As of semi-legal companies can hardly be used as a benchmark for ethics. And as many defenders said people in real life are not ethical and fair anyways.

By the way WinHoldem can be made to be a fairly good bot as it can be seen from the recent bot thread it was making a profit in sit and goes. It's just funny that people piss and moan about bots, but advocate software that is clearly unfair to beginners and people not in the know.

It is apparent people are not basin their arguments on ethics, but on their bottom line instead. Therefore, yes the original poster is right. If we do not adhere to the srictest ethics, online poker will simply turn into a cyborg war. Welcome to destructive capitalism at its best.

PS: As I said before in my opinion HUDs/PT are fine as long as they are not combined with datamining. But in many cases it is.