This, and the reactions. (NSFW)

I hypothesize that the kerfuffle over humbuged’s eliciting of payment for an SWF file arises out of a combination of the following factors (and the unacknowledgement of such factors):

• The comparison with a normal still-art commission is flawed in the traditional sense since such commissions tend to be privately requested and transacted, with the requestor typically posting the commissioned piece to his/her account gallery.
• To my knowledge, there are very few active FA users who own paid-access galleries of their own, as such individuals, such as Jeremy Bernal, tend to be very restrictive and litigious about their works being posted to publicly-accessible archives like FA and VCL (even imageboards such as fchan and furpiled maintain a DNP, or "do not post", list in order to steer clear of legal threats from such individuals).

Thus, humbuged may be going against the grain or trend of such archives by advertising previews of his already-created for-pay works through his FA account, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that his still-art works or still flash previews can’t stand alone as being "good enough for freeview". As noted in the comments, animation requires a bit more – or a bit different – expertise compared to the creation of still art, and thus entitles the creators of these works to the levying of additional financial barriers to access until easier, less personally-intensive means of animation can be delivered to the public.

I wonder, however, if FA has a policy regarding pay-based archive sites and the proper means of promotion through user accounts? It may clarify what would be in good taste of financial gain through such a business model, especially for something like user-created animation.