Thank you for all your comments, and we really appreciate all the people saying that they are going to stay with us. Like many of you, we are also disappointed that the original revenue sharing system didn’t work out. We are considering alternatives, and I hope those with opinions will voice them in the discussion started by Dadchamp here: http://www10.sharecg.com/wwwthreads-5.3/showflat.php?Cat=8,9,10,11,12&Board=suggestions&Number=87901&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=0∂=1&vc=1

There were a few people who made four basic arguments, which I will respond to here:

1. The site gets revenue from ads, and that revenue should be shared

While it's true that the site gets revenue from ads, remember that we have to pay our staff, as well as servers, office space, etc.

But in principle, we still agree that artists deserve to get the benefits of their hard work. That's why we're going to work our hardest to return to revenue sharing, but with a more sensible system that won't drown the website in illegitimate, copyright, or low quality posts.

2. There are no benefits to sharing on the site other than revenue
I know our site needs improvements, but as it stands, I think we offer a pretty good deal. You can upload an unlimited amount of files, up to 180MB each, and we'll host it for you for free. We make it easily searchable by tool type, category, format, etc. We give you an audience of hundreds of thousands of artists a month, where you can get helpful feedback and start a discussion about your work, which will ultimately help you become a better artist.

We are involved in an overall effort to beautify our site—making it easier to use, leave feedback, and a better place to showcase your work. In the near future, we will introduce our jobs system, which will allow you to use our website to submit a resume to hundreds of employers. We're going to introduce a Flash portfolio application, which you can use to present your art, animations, tutorials, or even freebies and embed in your resumes for the job system on our site.

3. If we enforced the rules, there would be no problems
First, one of the largest problems was the quality of uploads on the site, but the line between what is and isn't art, and what should or should not be showcased on our site, is too difficult to draw. We hoped the rating system and view counts would help the quality posts float to the top, but for whatever reason (and perhaps because people were driven by money, not wanting to leave feedback) it never really worked.

Second, the copyright issue is very complicated, and our staff had to spend hours trying to determine if a 3d Model or Poser freebie violated someone's copyright. Of course this might continue without the payment system, but the incentives made it so that people wanted to cheat the system. We anticipate a significant decrease in copyright infringement after we abolish the payment system.

4. This was a "bait and switch"
We respect our artists, and were never trying to trick them into anything. Please remember that we paid our contributors for every month we had a revenue sharing system, and we informed you when it ended. Our services were always and will continue to be 100% free, and you can easily remove all your content whenever you want.