Quote - > Quote - I know that you don't get something for nothing and can understand that Renderosity has to find a way to recoup the cost of hosting these files.

Rendo doesn't deserve any sympathy on that front because they brought that cost on themselves, 100% voluntarily, and with no external discussion.

They did it because some links to other sites would go down or become redundant and people had to keep reposting links to their new provider.
I can see why they did it, to provide free hosting for those who cannot afford to host their work themselves, so that is a good thing. As I said earlier though, they should still allow stuff hosted on other sites for those who can afford it etc and don't want their work bogged down with adverts for other vendors stuff.
As TrekkieGrrrl said:

Quote - True, I get four thumbnails from my store displayed before people can even get to the download link... BUT I also get four random thumbnails from other vendors. And I'm not doing freebies to advertize OTHER people, thank you very much.

I also believe that the marketplace could suffer. If people are continually bombarded with adverts, then they might not bother to browse the marketplace to look at the other products. People who sell products from their own sites will lose custom from people who go there to download their freebies. Not allowing offsite content providers to post links to their items in the free stuff section means that they will not be seen by as many people, they will generate less traffic to their sites and lose sales of other products.
Renderosity allow us the choice of where we want to host them and provide links as you did before. It says "Art Community" under the name not "Monopoly".

Daz Studio 4.8 and 4.9beta, Blender 2.78, Sketchup, Poser Pro 2014 Game Dev SR5 on Windows 8 Pro x64. Poser Display Units are inches