Tool-Assisted Speedruns - Are they cheating?

Title says it all. This is my view on tool-assisted speedruns, about cheating or not cheating.

Feel free to comment and post your opinions on the subject. If you have a disagreement on something, please at least be formal about it. Tell why you think something is cheating, not just looking, and thinking, "Hey, I can't figure out how to do that. He must be cheating." Comments like "yes, TAS is cheating" or "STFU noob, its cheating no matter how you view it" will be deleted. Tell me why if you don't agree with me! I know alot about these games and how the process of creating a TAS works, so I could probably discern for you if it is or is not cheating.

See, as for me, I think that a TAS itself appeals to another audience... not one who wants to see a video of someone beating the game in a humanly possible manner, but at the fastest possible time with the game pushed to its limits to do so, with bug exploits and all. It looks pretty cool, too. 🙂 Bug exploiting is a whole new argument, but generally, people will make two different TAS's exploiting and not exploiting a bug if it makes a huge difference in gameplay, like cuts out a chunk of the game. In fact, there are two TAS's for many games, like SMB2, SMW, and SM64.