Skin encryption survey

[smacklan]

Hello all,

I am doing an informal survey of end users of BBS GUI skins. If you were in the market for a skin, non-custom, would you have a problem purchasing a skin that was encrypted until license verification? To further that, would you purchase said skin if it had a "call home" feature similar to vBulletin's that further confirmed that license once installed even though you were still permitted to do all the customizing you can now to images and code?

Specifically:

If someone could come up with a method of piracy protection that:

- Allowed the legitimate owner to edit the HTML freely
- Allowed skin backup to the legitimate owner
- Prevented un-authorised redistribution
- Prevented editing by unauthorised parties
- Reduced the file sizes envolved with skins (Minor thing, but every bit counts)
- Doesn't use JavaScript, HTML encoding or any other falsification of client-rendered files


There is tremendous fraud in the GUI skin market, typically via chargebacks once the product is delivered. This not only hurts developers, but end users as well in the form of higher prices...such as auto insurance rates are effected by bad drivers. I am trying to guage how this scenario would be perceived.

Thanks for taking part!