RE: "US Copyright Law Section 107"

The spirit of this provision of the law was to allow limited distribution and sharing of information not wide-spread distribution as would be done if a copyrighted article from the "magazine" was posted by a member on a forum available to several hundred thousand members.

Once a contract is agreed to, even the author of the article would would be hard pressed to show his publishing the article on such a forum constituted fair use, until the assignment of copyright and usage reverts back to him. If Renderosity and the author have a valid contract restricting the author from any use of his submitted material for 3 months after publication, the author is bound to that contract.

Many publications offer no compensation other than "publication bragging rights" to budding authors. Whether being "published" is adequate compensation is up to each individual author to decide. There are some that will turn away from doing so simply because they feel knowledge should be freely shared. Those that feel their efforts have greater value or those authors that feel they are established enough to warrent some other form of compensation will not agree to their works being published. In such cases, it will be up to Renderosity to either offer compensation of value to those authors or seek content elsewhere.

Those interested in knowing what print publications offer can pick up a copy of the Writer's Market (or the Artists Market for artists). It lists thousands of publications and their rates. Many, many publications offer copies of the publication or "tear sheets" (copies of the article) as compensation, if they offer anything at all. It depends on the publication, it's size, their target market, their budget, and many other factors. Until an author builds up a resume, and attains some recognition...they can rarely expect to receive much in the way of compensation.