although polite, unlikely that this issue will gain universal acceptance.
we try to keep stats on ftp.microsoft.com, but know that there are at
least 12 unofficial mirrors that deny this, or refuse to give us these
stats by matter of convention. technically, you can't enforce something
like this into the protocol, since it can be easily circumvented and
undetected. i assert it will be if such a mechanism is offered.
that's not to say that i disagree with the proposal, but that your "need"
will only be satisfied by disallowing the caching of documents and
forcing authentication for access. that's the closest you'll get to a
real count, but you'll never be able to find those that pirate your info.
sure, a caching server can ignore your request not-to-cache, but it
will hose the stock ticker service in the process, and likely will be
controlled by the users eventually.
_______________________________________________________________
J. Allard jallard@microsoft.com
Program Manager of TCP/IP Technologies work: (206)882-8080
Microsoft Corporation home: (206)860-8862
"On the Internet, nobody knows you're running Windows NT"