"I am VERY VERY HAPPY to see the ass end of this program, I always thought it was a terrible idea and wide open for abuse.  I hope it stays gone for good this time."

Given that this scheme didn't harm you in any way, and it being decomissioned will not only mean people having less incentive to put up high quality models, and less income, I don't see how this can make you  "very very happy", unless you have another angle that you're not telling us about.

Ad supported community based schemes like this should be the way forward. Content creators get paid, and regular joes get stuff for $0. It's the next evolution of capitalism. It has all of the benefits of socialism, and none of the drawbacks. The people who want something for nothing get it, and the people who put in the effort and who have good ideas are rewarded for it.

Scrapping this scheme will discourage people from putting up high quality models for free, which will make model\IP piracy more likely.

Actually, Badfaerie, you are witnessing one of the major drawbacks.

People gaming the system. However, expecting to get paid for a freebie is one of those things that bothers me about the attitudes involved. I've seen how the financial outlay was an incentive to improve on the quality of the work. I've seen it preached that this is the new way of capitalism...

No, it is not...

And to have people steal other people's model and then monetarily benefit from that as well. (Please see the threads on Dalamatier.) Yeah, no. Better the program be terminated. If the Site cannot adequately police itself to protect against the abuse of such systems, then it should not be run. It is only going to hurt people like you in the long term.

A few bad apple have made it clear that the system is too flawed to be run in it's present state.