volatilegx - 4:12 am on Feb 27, 2007 (gmt 0)

We'll never get definitive answers on the questions of cloaking from search engine representatives. The topic of cloaking is so completely taboo that they purposefully make obtuse and misleading statements to make sure there is no clear cut policy. This leaves them plenty of wiggle room to just do what they please on a case-by-case basis.

Personally, I believe the safest method of New York Times style cloaking would be Geolocation based cloaking, where you simply give all IPs in Googlebot (and other major SE spider) ranges (geographically, I mean) access to premium content and make everybody else have a cookie that is only given upon registration/captcha/whatever.