OK, let's throw some cold water on this thread.
CE galleries looks like a great plug-in for pay sites. I would use them, but I'm leery of bandwidth upcharges, since it can get real expensive - real fast. $20/GB sounds like a lot, but it's more than pure bandwidth - you're licensing content so that's part of the fee.
As far as the spam goes.
1. A one-time announcement is OK, the special is a new development, so it falls within these guidelines. Also, a pure spam is generally allowed one-time, just look at the three locked threads from yesterday, they are spams and they weren't deleted.
2. CE is a sponsor of this board and helps pay the bills, so they should get some rope.
But hardcorehosting, don't you think you're being a bit too angry about this? You should site back, surf around
www.amateurpages.com for a half-hour, and then come back and post. It's amazing how relaxed you'll be.