[joosteto]

If downloading more than 5% of stored data is so expensive, wouldn't it have been cheaper to upload a file 19 times the size of the stored data (containing /dev/urandom)? After that, downloading just 5% of total data would have been free.

[yetanotherjosh]

It still wouldn't have been free. The free download allowance is spread daily across the entire month. That is, you can download 5% of your data per month, and only 0.16% of it per day. For your optimization to work, you'd have to retrieve your data over 30 days for it to be free.

[Herald_MJ]

At that point, your monthly fee would be greater than that of a regular S3 bucket, which has fewer barriers to retrieval.

[rasz_pl]

Reminds me of my advice to netflix after peering problems emerged, just push garbage upstream from every client to equalize your peering traffic.