AFK cloakers are not a problem by virtue of being both AFK and cloaked. One means they can't do anything and the other means they can't do anything. Nothing squared = nothing.

If you give people the ability to hunt cloakys, cloakys will be less useful in altering nullbear isk making behavior,

What I suspect is closer to an absolutely true statement is this combination of facts:
1. an AFK cloaked ship is indistinguishable from an actively piloted cloaked ship

A) Yes he is, just use some common sense. If you are unsure, try baiting him out and pretend to rat in a pvp ship, preferably with a point to grab him when he decloaks and a cyno to bring a counter hot-drop if that is what you fear, or at least be in fleet and have your friends waiting in a safe spot to come to your aid.

In any case after a few hours odds are he's just there to disrupt operations, carry on as normal. If you're still unsure, see above.

2. an actively piloted cloaked ship piloted by a non-blue pilot is most likely up to no good

A) This is 100% correct all of the time. An enemy pilot cloaked in your system is NEVER up to any good. He is either there to gather intel, look for a target to hotdrop, or merely disrupt isk making operations in the area.

If he's there to gather intel, there is not much you can do, and this is a reality of nullsec - intel is everywhere. Deal with it. (And by deal with it I mean make sure you have your own intel, play the spy vs spy game.)

If he's looking for a hotdrop, this is mostl ikely going to happen very quickly within the first 30 minutes to an hour of being there. Why? Because his friends sitting on the Blops Battleship or Titan are going to get bored waiting, and worse, if using a Titan, it is horribly unsafe to have it exposed to danger for any length of time. A 72 billion dollar loss is not worth the risk to catch some carebear in his ratting ship.

3. the first indicator that the pilot of a cloaked ship is active and not AFK is when they uncloak to execute their plan

A) Yes. Be ready for it. See Answer 1. Also, barring that, always stay aligned when ratting and mining, if you need help knowing how to do this as a miner, hint: get a frigate and stake out several warpuot points 150+ km from your asteroid and keep aligning in a circle around them. When your target decloaks, he will have a split second delay for targeting plus whatever his locktime is, as soon as you see him, just warp off, once warping starts his targeting is broken.

4. the active pilot of a cloaked ship dictates the time and place of the encounter; the "recipient" of the event
has no opportunity to dictate to the pilot of the cloaked ship the time of the encounter (short of "never",
i.e. dock up) and limited opportunity to dictate the place.

A) If he is active, he is not AFK. People are complaining about AFK pilots. They do absolutely nothing to threaten you, it's all in your mind. If he is active I have outlined some very simple solutions to handle the situation.

In closing, I'd like to point out that nerfing afk cloaking could have unintentionally worse results for nullbears who think it will grant them safety. Namely, any time a cloaked ship is in your system for prolonged periods of time, it becomes obvious they are NOT afk, and that DOES present a real threat. Also, there is nothing to stop a pilot from observing and bookmarking where you were mining and ratting at, then log off. While this may be a hit and miss deal, simply logging in and auto-warping to the spot you logged off is much quicker than gate jumping, decloaking and warping ot a location. IF you are not doing the above and he guesses your location right you may get caught. Also, cloaking ships are fairly cheap, there is nothing to stop a large alliance from simply letting any cloak timers run out, ship get destroyed, and sending a replacement in. Trust that the players will work around any solutions you hope CCP would come up to stop this threat that really isnt a threat to begin with.

MDD

Also, as has also been explained already, unlike AFK mining (which artificially skews the entire economy of the entire game), AFK cloaking doesn't actually do anything. Finally, I suppose you can dig out some support for that claim that there is any kind of correlation between pro-AFK-cloaking and anti-AFK-miningGǪ?

Honestly, I don't know why this discussion is continuing.

The fix is simple, balanced and fair: make cloaks use fuel. Doesn't have to be a lot of fuel. It's just going to run out sometime and if you want to do it for extended periods, you're going to need to go get some more.

What Tippia said.

I feel like helping the less fortunate.

NEVER NOT ALIGNED TO SOMETHING

If that's not security enough perhaps it's worth noting this is what I did in hi-sec mining on my other character, Ituhata. Hi sec is considerably more difficult, you know why? Because with all the random people in local your intelligence is considerably degraded. You have to stay on d-scan and watch for the catalyst gank and learn who to watch for in a local of anyhere from 30 to hundreds of players.

This is psychological warfare aimed at hurting an opponents economy. It's only effective if you let it be effective.

But I am trying to teach you to not be afraid of it. Once you learn this, it becomes a complete non-issue and you can even chuckle in the knowledge that someone is wasting 15$ a month on a character that is not doing anything to slow you down.

Hey Sarcasm, what kind of ratting or mining ship do you fly?

I want to help you out. I like helping people, I'll show you how you can do whatever it is you do right under the nose of active hunter ships, let alone a cloaked inactive one.