The Internet Archive's FreeCache
(beta) is "a system of
cooperating caches to move
large files of
free content
closer to users", providing a Real Simple(tm) way of solving problems such as this:
"Say an up-and-coming rock band, the RockLobsters, has a website that has a
large file, say www.rocklobsters.com/videos/my-new-rock-video.mpg
that is 5MB-1GB in size. If it gets popular, they will lose their guitars
and homes to their ISP because their bandwidth bill will shoot up.
While keeping their big file on their webhost, the RockLobsters change the
URL on their webpage to point to:
...
and this is it. Afterwards, users download the file from a nearby
machine on their participating internet service provider's network. It
sounds like a real Good Thing, especially for cash-strapped music
artists. Though I'm not sure how well it actually works and how widely
it has been embraced by ISPs.
Funny, I had raised that very issue just yesterday in the Webjay forum. Sometimes when you ask questions, answers seem to come
magically to you out of left field...
