The encoding does not prevent people from stealing or reselling script today. If someone wanted to resell the script, they could easily do that (and change all of the branding to match). Zend encoding (along with ionCube) was never really meant to prevent theft. The original purpose for products like Zend was for code optimization and performance. However, people started realizing that if they encoded their files, it prevented people from copying the code so companies like Zend and ionCube started to sell their encoding as "guardians." However, the truth of the matter is that all it really does is hurts the end user, people like you and I who would love to be able to customize the script to perform and operate exactly the way we want it. vShare is the only youtube clone script that I know of that encodes their files. Even the more expensive ones allow for you to customize them. I don't see why vShare should not do the same.