Look right now there isn't cases of ripping occurring yet (at least nothing major that is making someone pull their hair out anyway).
An encrypted system at this point would probably turn some people away from skinning since it is still early days. I believe that if indeed ripping does get out of hand at one point then an encrypted system would be necessary.
That way people who want to skin have the choice of either giving up or going to a community site to ask for help and look for tutorials and actually try to learn the stuff (This is directed at those who just download a skin and edit it and re-release btw
)
If Patchou were to approach us and say "hey guys I can make the encrypted system for you, or I can make a whole bunch of new skinning features which would you like?"
I would go for the new features, since at the moment that is more important since there are some people who still doubt the power that the skin system has. (Plus there are a lot of little things I would like see done which would let me be a bit more creative
)
[Discussion] Skinning copyrights, cloning, and idea recycling
/ 
