[ausjke]

After reading the page the 'cost of operation' might be what happened before-your-download and after-your-upload, as you are dealing with its deposit-cache-storage, so I assume it means 'archive-from-deposit/unarchive-to-deposit'. This is the same as charging for download(so download is _not_ free), and nearly the same as charging for upload(unless you remove the uploaded content from deposit quickly).

For Glacier I believe the download is not free? You need pay for the retrieval of stored data.