[ilya]

I think sites need to just openly let people use bots. Why not? Doing this would change the game, but it would not remove skill or make it unfair. If anything, it would make the game even more skill-based, while fostering potentially useful AI research. And the change wouldn't be that radical anyway -- online poker aspires to botness/cyborgness in many ways already. You could argue that allowing bots would not be anything more than the logical extension of allowing programs like PokerTracker and PAHUD and of allowing players to use formulaic strategies they find in books and forums.
As Alobar and others have pointed out, sites really don't have much of an incentive to eliminate bots, and it's unlikely they ever will. So why bother trying to fight a lost battle. If people still want to play against other humans, they can go to the casino or create a private table online with their friends.

i'm not saying that doing this would make good business/political sense for any poker site in the current climate, just that i wish the climate would become more open to this.