Perhaps another term other than “cloaking” should be made in reference to this kind of practice. Showing content with different presentation is not a bad habit. This is just optimizing your content to whatever device reading your content; examples are standard browsers, text browsers, WAP browsers, hand-held devices, screen readers and bots. If you optimize your page accordingly by removing layout tags or some images to comply with a specific user-agent but producing the same content, it should not be referred to as “cloaking”. Since cloaking is practically an SEO black hat method that presents a totally different content rather than the real content it should present. Displaying optimized content is different from displaying another content.
I am aware of this “content hiding from users but not for bots” practice. As an example, a module for a popular forum software has been created to do such work where a bot is considered a registered member and is automatically logged in the forums if the module detects it crawling around. This way, the bot, even not registered, can enter the forums and view the articles/posts that a non-registered user can’t do. But even the content is hidden from non-registered users, it can’t be called “cloaking” because of the fact that the page is just optimized and should be available for registered and logged members. Again, to push my point, content is not hidden, you only have to register and log so you can view it.
My conclusion is that, you can legally present an optimized page versions to whichever user-agent providing the same content. This is definitely ethical-whoever you are.
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