You are right, but it looks like days of free SP is over, this is evident in this post which is timely. I signed up some members of CryptoSteem family and they all complained of this restriction.

I think the bitter truth is to tell them that they shoulf spend at least $50 on steem power, this will give them some kind of comfort, then reduce the glitch.

When I joined steemit, i hate the fact that i cannot give as little as 5 cents to authors that write good contents, so i had to buy $200 worth of steem and powered up.

I was lucky because steem was sold for $0.93.

I think we should inform intending users about this earlier, so they won't form a bad impression of this great platform when the glitch appear.