[Hammer]

LadyMischief, I'm guessing you explored the other option, which would be to have the submitters submit the url to an 88x88 thumb which is hosted on their own server. In that case you could still use hardcore thumbs and also avoid the 2257 issue since nothing would be hosted on your server.

Obviously this would pose a concern if you accepted galleries from non partner status submitters, but I'm sure MT is big enough to have plenty of partner submitters and could just stop accepting galleries from everyone else.