I had this idea for an application. A mirror that has limits. I don’t know if this exists yet, but here’s the idea. Let’s say I wanted to be a mirror for a popular download. In this case, a completely legal MP3 file. I would put the file on my server, and provide a download link. Instead, it would be cool to put the file on my server, and have an application manage the serving of the file, so we can track the number of times it’s downloaded, total that up, and then make the download unavailable when bandwidth has exceeded a certain limit. When the bandwidth limit is exceeded, it should send you to another mirror, or to the original download site.
For all I know, this exists, perhaps CPAN or the SourceForge mirrors already do this. Of course maybe P2P is another solution. You know what, nevermind…