By popular demand, newbies can now pay to have some of their restrictions lifted. If you pay the fee, you become a Copper Member, and you can post images. That's the main point of this: allowing newbies to post images. Additionally (and these might change depending on how things go), Copper Members currently have these bonuses:

- Some of the same permissions as Member-rank members, such as reduced signature styling restrictions. (But none of the PM-related restrictions are currently lifted, such as the style limit or per-hour PM limit.)
- Your "you must wait ____ seconds between ___" counter is reduced by 75%. So if you're naturally of Newbie rank, you only have to wait 360-75% = 90 seconds.

If you paid an "evil IP" registration fee, then whatever you paid (in BTC terms) is subtracted from the upgrade fee. If you paid a registration fee a long time ago, you might even get a free Copper Membership due to the increase in BTC price. Just visit the link at the bottom of this post to check whether you have it already.

I am aware that for most people the benefits of this membership are pretty lame. This membership is only intended to fill a specific niche; if you don't need it, don't buy it. It is not intended to be the lower-cost Donator/VIP alternative which I've talked about before as a possibility.

I wrote the system so that I can easily add additional paid memberships in the future, but I might not ever do so. Not sure.

You can buy it here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=credit;promote