better than a Potato set up as a Server. ;D
Yeah the Always Online DRM Garbage is just painful, especially for a Game as popular as Minecraft. By now they have pretty much all Players they could ever get, and could outsource skins to being on the Players .minecraft folder or selectable in the Launcher. Not to mention one could just have Password Protected Servers, so only people with that Password are on the Whitelist, and then have each Player have a different Password so they cant share their own Password without losing access.