It is certainly not true that 'bots don't harm the casino' (approximate quote), as you assert. Bots harm The Game, in general, and if The Game is not healthy, everybody's earn goes down. Including mine. Including yours. Including every reading member of this forum, if you accept as a given that people with enough time on their hands will waste a little of it, frequenting a poker forum, learning about poker, obviously 'thinking' about the game, rather than just being content to show up at a table, and play two cards, sorting them in to 'good' and 'bad' starting hands. No. If you are reading this post, your game, your future, will be affected by these robots
I recommend Malmuth's Poker Essays III. Paraphrased: if the games are run well, tourists will be made to feel welcome, and they will be comfortable sitting down at the table. (The benefit should be obvious). A different point (his, paraphrased): As soon as a cardroom gets a reputation for cheating, either deserved or undeserved, that cardroom will close: nobody wants to go there, anymore. Certainly not the tourists. Not even the medium-skilled regulars.
Who wants to play the game, without the newer, less skilled players? Without the medium skilled regulars? Without the tourists, the 'mediums' will not have as many winning sessions: the 'mediums' will have only the sharks to play poker with. That, as Malmuth points out, won't last for very long, and then it's over. Do even the sharks want to play, when there are only other highly skilled sharks to sit down at the table with? Not so much. I fancy myself a trout, but I need some minnows; I don't want to sit down at the table with a group of sharks. If that's all that's left, how much poker can I play? How many minnows will show up, knowing of their own inexperience, trying to do better, trying to learn, trying to succeed, trying to move up, trying to get that excitement, that only next-higher stakes, and winning, will provide? Now, you, yourself: re-write that sentence. Add, at the end "and knowing that at some, maybe the next, level, a ROBOT will be waiting for you".
The online poker rooms have only a short time to fix this problem, and to fix it right the first time: as soon as Discovery Channel runs a program (over, and over, sheesh) about the M.I.T. Bot-Making Team (and they won't have the founders pictures' shadowed out, will they?) your hobby just took a turn for the worse, and it won't recover, won't ever be the way it was, "back in '07". Heck, as it is, it won't ever be the way it was, back in '05, before the Neteller fiasco, back when everybody who wanted to could load, play, unload, and spend the money the next day: but nobody here will seriously argue that the games are as soft as they used to be, when those adventurers could be found at most every table, at most every stakes. Those adventurers, like those days, are gone forever, and those adventurers weren't even fools. What's a little risky fun, what's wrong with taking a little holdem flyer, on a Friday night? And some beers, around the fraternity communal laptop, piped into the big-screen?
What's left over, the ones who haven't left, are the people who can put up with Epassporte, seven day delays, six hundred dollar limits on transfers, less for newbies, and various other restrictions that cause threads on this forum to multiply, and run on forever.
And we're about to turn those Neteller survivors into fools. Turn them into fools, who watch Discovery Channel (no, dude, they don't play poker anymore: they'd rather watch TV) and see the interview (again...) "Marty, what was your team's big break?" "Well, it was when we realized that we could pressure the poker sites into not impounding our funds, through manipulation of so-called public opinion. We'd even pressured them into discussing their detection techniques, point by point, because, man, we were entitled to a hearing, we were entitled to RESPOND, and if they had to wait for that, we had time to get most of the money off-site. No question, we lost a few funds, not most of the bankroll, but that was the major way that we got through 2008 and 2009, without losing most of our money. Our fourth-generation program, which came along in mid-2009, that was the icing on the cake, man, it was all history from there." (Voice-over: We'll be back, with the M.I.T. Bot-Making Team, right after this.)
You let bots, and bot makers survive, and you have killed your hobby. You have killed your dream of 'improving' your game, and moving up in limits. Do you really want to move up in limits, knowing that at a certain point, you're going to run into a brick bot? I'm sorry, brick wall? At this moment, the online game of heads up limit poker shoud be withdrawn, should be made non-available: that's the bot training ground. There will be other suggestions, some better than that one, to protect online poker. Some of those suggestions should be adopted.
But if you don't protect online poker, and it's integrity, and its fair availability to the masses, you will destroy online poker. The masses won't show up. And I'll tell you this: Chevrolet auto dealers make a lot more money than Ferrari auto dealers do. Think about it.